"CRISES" 


Rabbi  James   G.    Heller 


The  Judge  of  the  Universe 
"Israel,  Servant  or  Master?" 
"Beyond  the  Horizon" 
'The  Lion  and  the  Lamb" 


Philadelphia,  Pa. 
1917-1918 


Stack 
Annex 


Oo 


A  DISCOURSE  AT  TEMPLE  KENESETH  ISRAEL. 
By  RABBI  JAMES  G.  HELLER. 


Philadelphia,  December  9,   1917. 


According  to  the  classical  teaching  of  ancient 
Buddhism,  the  history  of  the  universe  is  divided  into  cycles. 
These  are  of  protracted  duration,  and  in  each 

r  Civilization 

occurs  a  similar  spiritual  pageant,  a  similar      Moves  man 


development  from  the  invincible  inspiration 
of  a  Buddha  to  the  gradually  accumulating 
murmurings  of  mankind.  Man  is  fettered  to  the  Prome- 
thean rock  of  time.  He  is  lashed  to  the  slowly  rotating 
wheel  of  the  instability  of  all  things.  And  as  he  lies  there, 
every  muscle  taut,  the  sweat  of  anguish  starting  from  his 
brow,  he  is  forced  by  inexorable  Fate,  Karma,  to  view 
again  and  again,  with  every  turn  of  the  wheel,  the  slow 
dsintegration  of  each  new-born  hope. 

The  idea  is  not  confined  to  Indian  mysticism.  Bertrand 
Russell  tells  the  same  story,  —  a  satirical  and  adamant  God 
who  has  created  man  only  to  watch  his  antics,  rainbow- 
winged  butterfly  though  he  may  be,  on  the  end  of  the  needle 
that  pierces  the  very  vitals  of  his  spirit. 

But  we  may  dissociate  this  view  from  its  pessimistic 
tinge.  There  does  seem  to  be  a  certain  periodicity  in  human 
thought,  in  the  great  movements  of  the  human  spirit.  Evo- 
lutionists and  philosophers  of  history  are  wont  to  picture 
life  as  an  ascending  spiral.  Life  seems  to  return  again  and 
again  to  the  same  station,  —  but  it  is  only  in  point  of  horizon- 
tal position,  not  of  vertical  elevation.  Before  Socrates  the 
thought  of  the  Greek  sages  was  centered  upon  the  external 
world.  Socrates  turned  the  eye  of  mankind  inward.  It 
was  he  who  first  voiced  the  idea  expressed  in  our  modern 

5C07S1S 


age  by  Pope,  "The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man."  And, 
superficially  at  least,  throughout  the  middle  ages  this  ten- 
dency persisted.  But  the  sfan  of  the  Renaissance  broke 
through  the  clouds  with  which  the  Dark  Ages  had  obscured 
the  light,  and  once  more  the  race  went  forward,  conquering 
Nature,  centering  effort  and  research  upon  the  world  with- 
out. What  momentum  the  movement  gained,  how  thor- 
oughly it  permeated  the  art  and  religion  and  civilization  of 
western  Europe,  is  common  knowledge ! 

But  the  pendulum  seems  again  to  be  at  the  turning- 
point,  ready  once  more  to  begin  upon  its  downward  and 
A  crisis  Before  upward  sweep.  Even  before  the  war  imma- 
terial, idealistic,  even  mystical  forces  had  be- 
gun to  struggle  for  preponderance, — and  like  David  they 
had  cast  their  stone  at  the  brow  of  the  Goliath  of  monistic 
materialism.  Maeterlinck  was  lending  the  drama  the  haunt- 
ing melodies  of  a  dream- fantasia.  Hauptmann  had  turned 
from  stark,  revolting  realism  to  the  realities  of  inspiration, 
beauty,  good,  and  faith.  The  neo-spiritualists,  such  as  Lodge, 
Wallace,  James,  Crookes  and  Lombroso, — men  of  rigid 
scientific  training  and  thought,  were  striving  to  vindicate 
the  soul,  to  confront  materialism  with  that  with  which  alone 
it  will  reckon, — "facts."  Even  the  pragmatic  school  of 
thought,  that  was  the  philosophic,  immaculately-conceived 
child  of  the  scientific  method,  had  slapped  its  astounded 
parent  in  the  face  and  had  begun  to  adopt  the  ideas  of  God, 
immortality  and  freedom,  as  necessary  postulates,  which 
could  be  humanly  demonstrated  by  the  "will  to  believe," 
or,  in  another  instance,  by  the  reality  of  spirit  in  the  great 
life-stream. 

Upon  a  world  already  in  the  throes  of  a  new  birth 

burst  the  pangs  of  universal  war.    At  first  paralysis  ensued. 

The  poets  became  incoherent;  historians  and 

War  Intensifies 

and  Hastens          philosophers  lost  all  sense  of  proportion  in 

their  insane  anathemas;  the  seventy  savants 

of  the  Germanic  Empire  pledged  their  names  to  a  host  of 

palpable  lies;  even  such  a  man  as  Karl  Liebknecht  forgot 


his  cause  for  a  moment  in  the  stress  of  partisanship.  And 
while  the  cannon  were  bellowing  like  bulls  of  Bashan, 
while  scientists  were  blessing  .the  world  with  an  edifying 
spectacle  of  the  genuineness  of  their  boasted  "scientific  dis- 
passionateness," while  the  air  was  full 'of  literary  missiles 
jostling  those  of  steel  and  iron, — men  were  dying  in  droves, 
Europe  itself  was  waking  to  scalding  tears  such  as  it  had 
never  known  before.  The  heart  that  had  almost  died  o£ 
fatty  degeneration  and  of  emotional  atrophy  woke  under 
the  prick  of  cold  steel.  For  years  and  years  we  had  built 
us  a  palace,  founded  upon  the  ruins  of  the  past.  Light  and 
life  and  luxury  radiated  everywhere.  But  in  those  ruins 
stirred  the  ghosts  of  the  past,  the  ghosts  of  ourselves  lying 
in  wait,  hoarding  their  strength  for  "the  Day,"  when  our 
gods,  our  Thors  and  Wotans  should  encounter  their  Mid- 
gard-serpents,  their  Lokis,  their  Fenris-wolves,  and  all  the 
horde  of  the  nether-world  of  material  things,  of  things  with- 
out spirit,  which  they  themselves  had  conjured  into  being. 
It  was  a  true  "Goetterdaemmerung,"  a  "Twilight  of  the 
Gods,"  the  false  gods  of  our  own  moulding. 

Yet,  as  Mr.  Wells  delineated  in  his  now  well-known 
book,  "Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through,"  the  emotional  up- 
heaval did  not  end  with  the  terror  and  the 

i    ,1  •  T\  r       »  •    '.  ,'  Concrete 

hate  and  the  pam.  Men  s  spiritual  reaction  opinions  Must 
was  immediate  and  natural.  In  the  realm  of  Gradually 

Emerge. 

religion,  of  the  progress  of  the  soul  of  the 
individual  and  of  the  mass,  as  well  as  in  commerce  and 
even  art,  "Necessity  is  the  mother  of  invention."  Men  at 
once  asked,  "If  there  is  a  God,  why  does  He  permit  this 
slaughter?"  And  pulpit  and  pew  have  both  been  strug- 
gling with  that  problem  ever  since.  The  solutions  thus  far 
proposed,  that  have  come  to  my  attention,  have  been  no  so- 
lutions. Nor  do  I  claim  to  possess  the  master-key.  My 
aim  is  merely  to  tell  the  tale  and  to  put  the  question  fairly 
and  squarely. 

With  the  lapse  of  time  the  problem  has  crystallized. 
What  at  first  were  vague  dissatisfactions  and  slowly  waking 


religious  consciousness  have  little  by  little  become  trans- 
muted into  definite  statement.  I  would  that  I  had  the  time 
to  bring  before  you,  who  must  be  interested  in  this  spiritual 
upheaval  of  our  world,  the  various  and  separate  systems 
that  have  been  evolved,  the  hundreds  of  volumes  that  have 
wrestled  with  the  moral  and  theological  ghosts  raised  by 
the  war.  A  voluminous  work  could,  and  probably  will,  be 
written  upon  the  subject.  Within  the  time  at  our  disposal 
we  can  but  peep  into  the  busy  human  workshop. 

I  have  selected  three  books  as  typical  and  helpful.   Even 

these  three  must  be  skimmed  through,  touching  only  the 

most  salient  points.    The  first  is  a  very  recent 

Mr.  Wells,  the 

Herald  of  a  work  by  H.  G.  Wells,  entitled  "God,  the  In- 

visible King."  Like  a  knight  of  the  olden 
days  Mr.  Wells  has  sauntered  forth  in  full  panoply.  With 
the  point  of  his  doughty  spear  he  spurns  the  slinking  de- 
fenders of  the  ancient  castles  of  other  gods.  He  is  the 
herald  of  a  new  faith,  the  champion  from  whose  crest  blows 
saucily  the  ribbon  of  modernity.  He  and  the  thousands  of 
others  who,  he  claims,  defend  the  same  cause  (but  not  one 
of  whom  is  named)  cannot  brook  the  dogmas  and  supersti- 
tions of  such  outworn  religions  as  Judaism  and  Christianity. 
Christianity,  in  the  gospel  according  to  Wells,  is  no  more 
than  an  absurd  mythology,  an  impossible  and  unworthy 
doctrine  of  "non-resistance,"  and  a  criminal  exalting  of  the 
individual.  Judaism  is  dismissed  as  being  a  vengeful,  tribal, 
narrow  religion.  Thus  we  see  the  true  mediaeval  chivalry 
with  which  Mr.  Wells  jogs  about  upon  his  quill-charger  and 
launches  fiery  and  fearless  attacks  against — windmills.  Ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Wells  himself,  the  greater  part  of  the  book 
is  devoted  to  clearing  up  misconceptions  rather  than  to  ex- 
pounding the  "simple  and  clear"  elements  of  his  own  doc- 
trine. 

Ever  since  "Mr.  Britling"  appeared  I  have  been  eager 
for  a  more  definite  exposition  of  Mr.  Wells'  views.  For, 
in  the  early  work,  he  evinced  as  positive  a  turn  of  mind  in 
repudiating  other  faiths  and  in  apostrophising  his  own  views, 


— views  which  to  my  modest  faculties  appeared  strangely 
lebulous  and  unsatisfactory.     But,  to  the  task! 

What,  then,  is  "The  Invisible  King"?  Let  us  assume 
iiat  we  have  followed  our  knight  in  his  campaigns,  that  we 
have  seen  centuries  topple  at  each  page  before  HIS  criticism 
his  onslaughts.  Let  us  assume  that  we  have  of  other  Faitns-  t 
perused  his  chapter  on  "Heresies";  that  we  have  carefully 
Followed  our  author's  attempts  to  show  the  evils  of  specu- 
lation, of  the  doctrines  of  the  trinity,  and  so  on; —  to  show 
:hat  "God  is  not  magic";  that  He  is  not  providence,  that 
He  does  not  influence  the  world  at  all  except  through  the 
tninds  of  men;  that  He  does  not  desire  "quietism,"  that  is, 
|i  life  of  abstinence,  of  asceticism;  that  He  does  not  punish, 
Is  not,  like  the  Jewish  God,  the  author  of  divine  "frightful- 
less" ;  that  He  does  not  wish  to  be  feared,  nor  to  frighten 
:hildren;  and  lastly  that  God  is  not  sexual,  and  has  no  spe- 
:ial  concern  with  such  matters. 

Wells  claims  that  there  are  two  distinct  ideas  implied 
n  the  word  "God,"  the  one  he  calls  the  "Veiled  Being," 
Sod  as  Nature,  the  other  the  "Invisible  King," 

His  Positive 

God  as  Creator.    From  this  point  let  me  for     Teachings  as 
the  most  part  quote  Mr.  Wells  himself.    "We     to  Go<L 
lo  not  know,  and  perhaps  cannot  know  in  any  comprehen- 
sible terms,  the  relation  of  the  Veiled  Being  to  that  living 
•eality  in  our  lives  who  is,  in  my  terminology,  the  true  God.'' 
Fhe  reality  of  religion  is  only  the  God  of  the  heart,  not  the 
jod  of  "the  starry  vault  above." 

"The  Invisible  King"  is  finite  f  "struggling  and  taking 
i  part  against  evil."  The  question  of  immortality  is  no 
:oncern  of  religion ;  that  is,  of  the  religion  of  "The  Invisi- 
)le  King."  "God  is  neither  all-wise,  nor  all-powerful,  nor 
)mnipresent;  ...  he  is  neither  the  maker  of  heaven  and 
arth,and  .  .  .  he  has  little  to  identify  him  with  that  hereditary 
jod  of  the  Jews  who  became  the  'Father'  in  the  Christian 
iystem. "  "He  i&a  god  of  salvation,  a  spirit,  a  person,  a  strongly 
narked  and  knowable  personality,  loving,  inspiring,  and 
ovable,  who  exists  or  strives  to  exist  in  every  human  soul." 


He  is  identified  only  with  life,  with  the  gradual  shaping  of 
the  forms  of  life.  God  is  a  friend,  "a.  beautiful  thing  found 
and  picked  up  by  the  wayside." 

God  is  Courage.  He  does  not  call  to  quiet  and  seclu- 
sion, but  to  service.  "The  true  God  goes  through  the  world 
like  fifes  and  drums  and  flags,  calling  for  recruits  along  the 
street."  God  is  a  Person.  He  is  the  "king  and  captain/' 
He  is  a  finite,  struggling  person.  "He  hopes  and  attempts 
.  .  .  God  is  no  abstraction  nor  trick  of  words,  no  Infinite. 
He  is  as  real  as  a  bayonet  thrust  or  an  embrace."  He  affects 
the  universe  only  through  the  bodies  of  those  who  believe 
in  him  and  serve  him.  He  comes  into  space,  but  is  not  of  it. 
But  he  lives  in  time.  He  grows  as  mankind  grows.  "He  is 
the  undying  human  memory,  the  increasing  human  will." 
But  he  is  more  than  the  collective  mind  and  purpose  of  the 
race,  "as  a  temple  is  more  than  a  gathering  of  stones,  or 
a  regiment  is  more  than  an  accumulation  of  men."  God  is 
Youth,  looking  not  backward  but  forward.  God  is  Love, 
a  love  that  rises  above  thought  of  self,  an  "austere  love." 
Religion  when  deepest  is  "a  search  for  escape  from  the  self- 
centered  life  and  over-individuation."  God  demands  moral 
sacrifice,  an  ethical  life, — instinct  with  the  desire  to  socialize 
and  racialize  all  human  endeavor. 

"God  faces  the  blackness  of  the  Unknown  and  the  blind 
joys  and  confusions  and  cruelties  of  Life,  as  one  who  leads 
mankind  through  a  dark  jungle  to  a  great  conquest.  He 
brings  mankind  not  rest  but  a  sword."  One  must  feel  God, 
no  proof  is  needed.  God  himself  is  only  beginning  to  real- 
ize the  end  for  which  he  has  been  striving,  namely,  the 
conquest  of  death,  by  incorporating  the  individual  into  an 
undying  purpose,  and  by  defeating  the  approaching  extinc- 
tion of  the  species  with  the  cooling  of  our  planet.  God  is 
a  Rebel.  "Our  God  is,  we  feel,  like  Prometheus,  a  rebel. 
He  is  unfilial."  "We  are  the  militant  followers  of  and  par- 
ticipators in  a  militant  God."  Sin  to  Mr.  Wells  is  a  form 
of  temporary  insanity.  There  is  a  certain  kind  of  salvation 


7 

and  damnation.     "Not  to  realize  that  one  can  be  damned 
is  certainly  to  be  damned." 

This  in  brief  and  yet  complete  outline  is  the  new  reve- 
lation, which  Mr.  Wells  with  full  intent  announces  as  the 
religion  of  the  twentieth  century.  Had  v.a-  stillMuch 
rious  other  religions  not  been  announced  by  a  Good  in  the 
number  of  other  Messiahs,  of  the  journalistic 
status  and  the  advertising  skill  of  Mr.  Wells, — such  as  Israel 
Zangwill,  Charles  W.  Eliot,  etc.,  his  efforts  might  have  met 
wit}]  wider  acclaim.  I  trust  that  I  shall  not  be  understood 
to  disparage  entirely  this  book  of  Mr.  Wells.  It  is  difficult 
not  to  appear  satirical,  and  not  to  be  so,  in  the  face  of  the 
author's  unlimited  scorn  for  all  other  religious  systems,  his 
almost  impertinent  manner  of  disposing  of  them  with  one 
ignorant  sentence.  Yet,  as  you  have  seen  from  the  outline 
of  the  book,  deep  beneath  all  the  surface  imperfections 
there  is  the  confession  of  a  soul  which  has  found  the  funda- 
mental reality  of  life.  However  inconsistent  may  be  the 
expression,  however  blatant  the  immediate  proclamation 
to  a  hoary  world  of  something  Wellsian  and  "new  under 
the  sun,"  however  retrogressive  may  be  the  theological  for- 
mula struck  off  by  this  new  Messiah,  we  cannot  but  feel  our 
kinship  with  his  essential  feeling  for  the  unity  of  life  and 
of  men.  The  purpose  of  our  investigation  is  not  to  deny 
this,  merely  to  point  out  some  of  the  fallacies  and  deficiencies 
of  that  which  is  original — if  it  indeed  prove  so,  with  Mr. 
Wells. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  a  book  which  occupies  still  another 
position,  and  which  is  equally  indicative  of  the  turn  of  the 
pendulum  of  civilization's  thought.    In  it  Mr.     Archer,s 
Wells   finds   his   Cervantes,    who   chronicles     criticism 

...  1-11  •,  of  Wells. 

with  the  same  detail  and  pungent  wit  the 
aberrations  of  his  hero.  The  book  is  called  "God  and  Mr. 
Wells,"  by  William  Archer.  In  it  he  both  demonstrates 
Mr.  Wells'  absurdities  and  expounds  his  own  system.  First 
he  asks  what  is  the  relation  of  the  "Invisible  King"  to  the 
"Veiled  Being."  If  he  has  no  relation  at  all,  we  are  merely 


8 

creating  new  difficulties  for  religion.  Mr.  Wells  offers  no 
proof  for  the  existence  of  "The  Invisible  King,"  except  that 
the  idea  works  well.  ".  .  .  It  is  certain  that  Mr.  Wells' 
God  would  stand  a  better  chance  of  satisfying  the  innate 
needs  of  the  human  intelligence  if  he  had  not  (apparently) 
given  up  as  a  bad  job  the  attempt  to  relate  himself  to  the 
causal  plexus  of  the  All."  Mr.  Archer  then  proposes  some 
alternative  myths  which  might  account  as  well  as  those  of 
Mr.  Wells  for  the  relation,  or  lack  of  relation,  between  the 
two  divinities.  Individudtion  is  not  the  source  of  human 
ill,  but  our  only  good.  Finding  God,  according  to  Mr. 
Wells,  is  very  much  like  conversion.  If  "The  Invisible 
King"  can  effect  changes  by  influencing  the  minds  of  his 
worshippers,  why  has  he  not  done  so?  Why  has  he  left  un- 
suggested  all  the  innumerable  opportunities  which  lie  so 
close  to  hand?  Mr.  Wells  uses  the  most  anthropomorphic 
language  to  convince  us  of  the  reality  of  his  God.  "An 
anthropomorphic  God  is  one  who  reflects  the  mental  char- 
acteristics of  his  worshippers;  and  that  Mr.  Wells'  God 
does,  if  ever  God  did  in  this  world."  Mr.  Wells  repre- 
sents his  God  as  being  a  synthesis  of  the  mind  of  the  race, 
and  yet  of  independent  existence, — as  a  cathedral  is  more 
than  the  stones.  But  the  analogy  and  the  thought  do  not  hold. 
A  cathedral  is  more  than  the  stones,  because  it  is  the  result 
of  a  higher  intelligence  which  co-ordinates  and  plans.  There- 
fore "The  Invisible  King"  could  not  be  both  a  synthesis 
and  an  independent  reality  without  positing  a  further  syn- 
thesizing power,  which  would  only  complicate  matters  still 
more.  This  new  religion  is  of  no  avail  to  men  and  is  not 
based  upon  deep  human  motives.  No  man  is  consoled  at 
the  time  of  death  by  the  thought  that  he  will  be  merged 
into  the  immortality  of  God.  In  the  end,  Mr.  Archer  says, 
we  must  come  back  to  the  Veiled  Being  as  the  real  goal  of 
men's  yearnings  and  ponderings.  "There  are  two  elements 
of  consolation  in  life,  the  things  of  which  we  are  sure  and 
the  things  of  which  we  are  unsure."  "We  are  sure  that 
man  has  been  launched  upon  the  most  romantic  adventure 


that  mind  can  conceive."  And  the  mysteries,  that  tran- 
scend the  world  of  reason,  and  yet  which  we  know  to  exist 
in  our  spirit,  lure  us  on,  and  give  hope  of  a  final  solution. 
Man  himself  is  an  insoluble  mystery.  Perhaps  the  con- 
summation of  our  search  for  the  Veiled  Being  may  be  in 
doubt,  and  yet  there  is  infinitely  more  hope  of  understanding 
him  than  "of  ever  getting  into  confidential  relations  with 
Mr.  Wells'  Invisible  King."  Of  what  avail  is  it  to  accept 
any  such  compromise  divinity  ?  Rather  should  a  man  prefer 
the  religion  of  wonder,  of  paying  to  "this  amazing  frame 
of  things  the  tribute  of  an  unutterable  awe." 

Mr.  Archer  has  not  only  exposed  the  fallacies  of  the 
Wellsian  "King,"  but  has  set  forth  with  manly  sincerity  a 
sincere  view  of  the  universe,  which  though  unable  to  search 
out  God  by  intuitive  means,  finds  much  to  wonder  at  and 
to  strive  for. 

I  cannot  but  feel  with  Mr.  Archer  that,  as  the  Chil- 
dren of  Israel,  tired  of  waiting  for  news  from  the  God  on 
the  cloudy  mountain-top,  made  for  them-  Mr  w  u  ,  God 
selves  a  "synthetic  deity,  finite,  friendly,  ands  is  a  Retro- 
very  like  the  Invisible  King,  inasmuch  as  he 
seems  to  have  worked  no  miracles,  and  done,  in  fact,  nothing 
whatever,"  so  has  Mr.  Wells  wearied  and  bowed  to  a 
"Golden  Calf."  In  fact  it  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Wells' 
God,  divested  of  his  modern  verbiage,  can  be  identified 
clearly  with  the  popular  conceptions  current  at  the  time  of 
the  prophets, — a  "finite"  God,  the  "captain"  and  "leader" 
of  the  "race,"  partaking  of  their  existence,  and  dependent 
upon  them  for  his  own  synthetic  existence,  even  #s  they 
depended  upon  him  in  many  ways.  Most  early  religions 
conceived  of  their  finite  God  as  being  subservient  to  a 
Higher  Power.  Zeus  was  not  the  Creator  of  the  Universe 
in  Greek  mythology.  In  the  Norse  Eddas  the  Gods  them- 
selves must  bow  to  the  decrees  of  Fate.  Among  all  nations 
the  course  of  religion  seems  to  have  been  from  early  oppo- 
sitions, polytheisms,  to  an  ever  broadening  and  pervading 


IO 


unity.  Mr.  Wells,  therefore,  represents  a  retrogression  in 
the  march  of  the  human  spirit. 

A  third  book,  published  near  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
is  a  dramatic  prose-poem  by  Rabindranath  Tagore,  called 
A  Drama  by  "The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber."  Here 
Tagore-  again  "the  King"  is  God.  The  similarity  of 

this  name  to  Mr.  Wells'  "Invisible  King"  is  rather  striking. 
Would  that  I  had  the  time  to  tell  you  the  details  of  this  ex- 
quisite and  meaningful  allegory.  My  cursory  sketch  can 
give  no  conception  of  the  mysterious  grace  and  the  potent 
magic  of  the  text  itself. 

Tagore  first  pictures  a  great  festival  in  the  country  of 
a  "King"  who  never  shows  himself  to  the  people.  The 
people  are  discussing  his  existence ;  some  claim  that  there  is 
no  king,  others  that  the  reason  for  his  hiding  is  because  he 
is  hideous.  But  the  believers,  who  are  not  swayed  by  the 
reasons  of  the  mob,  proclaim  that  there  is  evidence  of  the 
King  on  every  hand : — "The  whole  country  is  all  filled  and 
crammed  and  packed  with  the  King:  and  you  call  him  a 
'gap' !  Why,  he  has  made  every  one  of  us  a  crowned  King !" 
All  the  criticism  means  nothing,  and  cannot  militate  against 
the  King's  glory  and  power.  "With  a  mere  breath  you  can 
blow  out  the  flame  which  a  lamp  inherits  from  the  sun,  but 
if  all  the  world  blow  upon  the  sun  itself  its  effulgence  re- 
mains undimmed  and  unimpaired  as  before."  "But  look 
at  the  nice  order  and  regularity  prevailing  all  over  the  place 
— how  do  you  explain  it  without  a  King?" 

Deep  beneath  the  palace  the  King  has  built  him  a  Dark 
Chamber.  Here  he  converses  with  his  Queen.  To  my  mind 
the  "Queen"  typifies  striving  humanity,  in  its  search  for 
God,  the  "King  of  the  Dark  Chamber."  The  Queen's  maid 
relates  how  she  came  to  trust  in  the  King.  She  says,  "Per- 
haps I  could  rely  and  depend  upon  him  because  he  was  so 
hard,  so  pitiless!"  "A  day  came  when  all  the  rebel  in  me 
knew  itself  beaten,  and  then  my  whole  nature  bowed  down 
in  humble  resignation  on  the  dust  of  the  earth.  And  then 
I  saw  ...  I  saw  that  he  was  as  matchless  in  beauty  as  in 


II 

terror."  In  the  succeeding  dialogue  between  the  Queen 
and  King  she  asks  what  of  wonder  or  beauty  he  sees  in  her. 
The  King  replies:  "I  see  that  the  darkness  of  the  infinite 
heavens,  whirled  into  life  and  being  by  the  power  of  my 
love,  has  drawn  the  light  of  a  myriad  stars  into  itself,  and 
incarnated  itself  in  a  form  of  flesh  and  blood.  And  in  that 
form,  what  aeons  of  thought  and  striving,  untold  yearnings 
of  limitless  skies,  the  countless  gifts  of  unnumbered  sea- 
sons." "But  could  you  see  yourself  mirrored  in  my  own 
mind,  how  grand  would  you  appear !  In  my  own  heart  you 
are  no  longer  the  daily  individual  which  you  think  you  are — 
you  are  verily  my  second  self." 

A  false  king  presents  himself,  and  is  used  by  other 
princes  who  have  gathered  for  the  festival  to  further  their 
machinations.  The  Queen  mistakes  him  for  It  Typlfies  Man- 
the  real  King  and  gives  him  her  garland,  kind's  search 
They  set  fire  to  the  palace,  and  when  the 
Queen  has  discovered  her  error  she  casts  herself  into  the 
flames,  only  to  escape  unscathed  and  to  find  herself  for  a 
moment  face  to  face  with  the  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber. 
Unprepared  as  she  is,  the  vision  strikes  limitless  terror  to 
her  heart.  She  exclaims,  "Terrible,  oh  it  was  terrible!  I 
am  afraid  even  to  think  of  it  again.  Black,  black, — oh, 
thou  art  black  like  the  everlasting  night!  I  only  looked  on 
thee  for  one  dreadful  instant.  The  blaze  of  the  fire  fell  on 
your  features — you  looked  like  the  awful  night  when  a 
comet  swings  fearfully  into  our  ken,  oh,  then  I  closed  my 
eyes — I  could  not  look  on  you  any  more.  Black  as  the 
threatening  storm-cloud,  black  as  the  shoreless  sea  with 
the  spectral  red  tint  of  twilight  on  its  tumultuous  waves!" 
But  the  King  replies:  "The  utter  and  bleak  blackness  that 
has  today  shaken  you  to  your  soul  will  one  day  be  your 
solace  and  salvation."  But  fear  has  found  its  way  into  the 
Queen's  heart,  and  so  she  flees  to  her  father's  house, — 
never  doubting  but  that  the  King  will  soon  come  after  her 
and  sue  for  her  return.  The  princes,  upon  learning  of  her 
flight,  pursue  her,  defeat  the  army  of  her  father,  prepare 


12 

to  battle  with  each  other  for  the  possession  of  the  Queen,— 
when  they  learn  of  the  approach  of  the  "King."  All  save 
one  of  the  princes  flee.  The  Queen,  who  has  felt  herself 
desolate  and  degraded,  once  more  plucks  up  hope.  The 
King  defeats  the  host  of  the  enemy  in  a  rushing  storm-cloud, 
and  returns  to  his  palace  without  a  word  to  the  Queen.  And 
at  last,  after  a  great  spiritual  struggle,  the  Queen  casts  off 
all  pride  and  decides  to  go  to  the  King  as  would  a  beggar. 
After  her  journey  she  enters  the  Dark  Chamber  once  more, 
but  now  purified  of  her  sin,  her  spirit  humbled,  ready  for 
the  revelation  of  the  King's  true  nature.  When  she  sees 
him,  the  following  dialogue  ensues,  with  which  the  play 
concludes.  Queen :  "You  are  not  beautiful,  my  lord — you 
stand  beyond  all  comparisons."  King:  "That  which  can  be 
comparable  within  me  lies  within  yourself."  Queen:  "If 
this  be  so,  then  that  too  is  beyond  comparison.  Your  lover 
lives  in  me — you  are  mirrored  in  that  love,  and  you  see 
your  face  reflected  in  me:  nothing  of  this  mine,  it  is  ail 
yours,  O  Lord!"  King:  "I  open  the  doors  of  this  dark 
room  today — the  game  is  finished  here!  Come,  come  with 
me  now,  come  outside,  into  the  light!"  Queen:  "Before  I 
go,  let  me  bow  at  the  feet  of  my  lord  of  darkness,  my  cruel, 
my  terrible,  my  peerless  one!" 

Is  this  not  a  nobly  beautiful  and  poetic  idea?  God  is 
in  this  sense  the  Invisible  King  of  the  world,  a  King  with 
whom  all  of  us  can  commune,  .the  Lord  of  both  darkness 
and  light,  who  comes  to  us  as  we  find  life's  realities  be- 
neath the  froth  and  evanescence  of  our  own  empty  pride. 

But,  friends,  this  is  a  time  which  tries  the  souls  of  all 

men.     The  Jew,  too,  has  been  tried  in  the  balance  of  our 

precarious  times.    With  what  belief  shall  we 

The  Times  Com-  ,  ...  -.     TT7.,  111 

.pel  us  TOO  to         emerge  from  this  chaos  ?    What  shall  we  pre- 
Examine  Our         serve  out  of  the  welter  of  these  days  ?    Must 

Views.  J 

we  indeed  cast  overboard  some  of  the  spirit- 
ual ballast  which  has  steadied  our  ship  in  its  passage  through 
the  stormy  centuries?  Must  we  plead  guilty  to  Mr.  Wells' 


13 

indictment  that  ours  is  a  vindictive  and  tribal  God?  Must 
we  adopt  his  own  "Invisible  King"? 

Of  course,  at  the  very  outset  Mr.  Wells  would  proba- 
bly object,  according  to  his  fashion,  that  a  minister  must 
defend  his  religion,  and  that  he  has  become  so  immured  in 
his  theological  straight- jacket  that  his  views  concerning  the 
great  questions  of  life  can  be  of  little  value.  But  I  accuse 
Mr.  Wells  of  being  guilty  of  exactly  the  fault  of  which  he 
charges  the  professional  pastor.  It  is  he,  not  we,  who  has 
made  a  God  of  his  own  immature  imaginings,  he,  not 
we,  who  would  measure  infinity  with  the  yardstick  of  his 
adolescent  religious  intuitions.  In  defending  the  religion 
of  the  prophets,  the  God  of  the  prophets,  we  are  fighting  for 
the  religion  of  mankind,  for  the  ideas  that  have  made  this 
modern  world  possible,  that  have  to  a  great  extent  made 
morality  out  of  savage  chaos. 

Why  need  I  repeat  those  great,  those  majestic  concep- 
tions of  religion's  master-souls!  Surely  they  are  well 
known  to  us  all.  God  is  One,  not  two,  as  Mr. 

Prophetic  Ideas 

Wells  would  persuade  us.  He  is  both  Creator  of  God  as  one, 
and  Leader,  both  Nature  and  Soul.  Our  souls 
yearn  for  um'ty,  in  our  own  life  we  have  enough  of  duality, 
enough  of  discord  and  disharmony.  We  will  not  be  satis- 
fied with  another  myth  of  gods  and  subsidiary  gods.  We 
know  too  well  the  moral  maggots  that  doctrine  breeds. 
And  no  matter  how  seductive  the  language  that  clothes  the 
thought,  no  matter  how  pretentiously  modern  the  siren 
tongue,  we  will  not  deny  our  Master.  And  Mr.  Wells  has, 
either  wilfully  or  ignorantly,  perverted  the  ideas  of  the 
prophets-.  They  never  taught  that  God  is  vengeful,  or  that 
He  delights  in  "divine  frightfulness.'  Why,  the  veriest 
tyro  in  Biblical  lore  knows  that  Hosea  insisted  upon  the  fact 
that  God  is  justice, — but  that  God's  justice  is  also  love,  that 
God  admonishes  as  a  father  his  child,  that  He  repents  and 
relents,  and  that  in  the  end,  after  the  lash,  after  the  purify- 
ing fires,  He  gathers  His  children  to  His  bosom  with  yearn- 
ing love.  But  though  we  believe  in  God's  love,  though  we 


14 

approach  Him  with  childlike  and  implicit  trust,  yet,  like 
Tagore,  we  know  that  as  long  as  we  are  wayward,  as  long 
as  our  deeds  merit  His  judgment,  we  shall  feel  the  lash  of 
the  inexorable  and  just  laws  with  which  He  has  ordered 
this  world.  Of  what  comfort  to  us  is  the  notion  of  a  god 
who  is  weak  and  impotent,  who  has  been  of  no  avail  in  the 
minds  of  mert,  a  god  who  is  Himself  a  slave  to  the  "Veiled 
Being"  who  has  shaped  the  visible  universe  and  who  shrouds 
himself  in  infinity?  Why,  such  a  god  would  be  unfit  to 
worship,  for  he  would  be  below  his  own  adherents ! 

Do  we  indeed  know  naught  of  this  world  in  which  we 
live  ?  Is  there  an  absolute  division  between  the  spirit  of  the 
we  do  Know  world  and  the  spirit  that  animates  the  souls 
Much  of  the  of  men?  Do  we  never  feel  ourselves  at  one 

"Veiled  Being."  .  ,       , 

with  the  world,  never  plunge  our  conscious- 
ness into  the  beauties  and  glories  of  the  rounded  heavens, 
never  look  down  the  wistful  vistas  of  the  past,  never  see 
the  majestic  stars  from  the  mysterious  well  of  our  own 
spirits,  never  feel  our  kinship  with  the  clod,  never  lie  upon 
the  yielding  turf  and  sail  aloft  into  the  beckoning  blue?    "I 
am  the  Lord,  that  maketh  all  things:  That  stretched  forth 
the  heavens  alone ;  That  spread  abroad  the  earth  by  Myself ; 
That  frustrated!  the  tokens  of  the  impostors,  And  maketh 
diviners  mad;  That  turneth  wise  men  backward,  And  mak- 
eth their  knowledge  foolish''    "I  am  the  Lord  and  there  is 
none  else,  Beside  me  there  is  no  God;  I  have  girded  thee, 
though  thou  hast  not  known  Me ;  That  they  may  know  from 
the  rising  of  the  sun,  and  from  the  west,  That  there  is  none 
beside  Me;  I  am  the  Lord,  and  there  is  none  else;  I  form 
the  light,  and  create  darkness;  I  make  peace,  and  create 
evil;  I  am  the  Lord,  that  doeth  all  these  things."     The 
heavens  and  the  heavens  of  heavens  cannot  contain  God, — 
and  yet  this  man  would  imprison  Him  within  the  narrow 
confines  of  the  life  of  our  day.    We  want  a  God,  not  a  con- 
glomerate   picture    of    ourselves,    a    God    who    transcends 
thought  and  fantasy,  who  is  infinitely  beyond  our  infinite 
vision, — and  who  yet  is  near  us,  whose  spirit  is  ours,  is 


mirrored  in  ours,  whose  marvels  beggar  description,  writ- 
ten indelibly  in  every  atom,  in  every  microbe  that  dances 
in  the  sun's  rays  a  moment  between  birth  and  extinction. 
Do  you  not  know  that  marvelous  confession  of  the  near- 
ness and  of  the  inscrutableness  of  God?  "Whither  shall  I 
go  from  Thy  spirit  ?  Or  whither  shall  I  flee  from  Thy  presr- 
ence?  If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  Thou  art  there;  If  I 
make  my  bed  in  the  nether-world,  behold,  Thou  art  there. 
If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning,  And  dwell  in  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  sea ;  Even  there  would  Thy  hand  lead  me, 
And  Thy  right  hand  would  hold  me.  And  if  I  say,  surely 
the  darkness  shall  envelop  me,  And  the  light  about  me  shall 
be  night;  Even  the  darkness  is  not  too  dark  for  Thee,  But 
the  night  shineth  even  as  the  day;  The  darkness  is  even  as 
the  light." 

But,  by  this  time,  you  will  surely  have  asked  your- 
selves the  question,  Of  what  avail  is  all  this?  Is  this  not 
mere  abstraction,  mere  theological  quibbling?  God 
Can  it  bring  solace  to  millions  of  mother-  judge  of  the 
hearts?  Can  it  revive  our  belief,  not  merely 
in  God,  but  in  men?  Can  it  quicken  us  in  the  perplexities 
that  torture  our  souls?  I  have  said  that  the  times  have 
called  forth  a  new  interest  in  religion.  Though  many  scoff, 
or  smile  bitterly,  though  their  eyes  now  can  only  stare  ahead 
into  bleak  darkness, — yet  out  of  the  sorrow  and  out  of 
the  doubt,  out  of  the  night,  shall  come  hope  and  comfort 
and  light.  "The  Day  of  the  Lord"  has  indeed  come,  when 
we  must  once  more  seize  upon  the  eternal  verities  as  the 
only  enduring  staff  of  life.  Our  hearts  have  been  cleaving 
to  the  perishable,  the  material,  the  bodily.  The  savage  sells 
stores  of  wealth  for  a  string  of  wampum,  for  a  bright  bit 
of  calico.  We  have  sold  our  souls  for  baubles,  for  wealth 
and  pleasure  and  vanity.  We  must  first  turn  from  our 
ways, — then  shall  we  see  deep  within  our  own  souls  the 
answer  to  the  riddle  of  the  sphinx.  God  is  Justice !  God  is 
the  Judge  of  the  Universe !  "The  Lord  standeth  up  to  plead, 
And  standeth  to  judge  the  peoples."  It  is  the  Lord  Himself 


i6 

who  has  done  all  this,  who  has  led  us  inflexibly  to  our  own 
salvation!  Let  justice  come  before  love!  Let  honor  and 
law  and  right  precede  the  melting  heart  and  the  outstretched 
arm !  In  moments  of  weakness  I  pray  to  God  that  it  might 
be  otherwise,  that  yielding  might  indeed  bring  victories, 
that  the  universal  law  that  governs  planets,  vegetable  life, 
and  struggling  microbes,  might  be  abated  in  the  case  of  man, 
that  we  might  somehow  conduct  a  universal  Fabian  cam- 
paign. But  we  know  that  it  is  not  so, — and  when  we  fail 
to  realize  it,  God  soon  brings  us  to  our  senses.  Perhaps 
God  has  ordered  things  well  in  that  it  is  not  so.  We  can 
hold  fast  at  least  to  His  darkness  and  implacableness,  as 
did  the  servant  in  Tagore's  play.  We  can  rely  upon  His 
inflexible  law  of  justice  and  truth.  And  then,  when  the 
victory  has  been  won,  when  we  have  conquered,  not  the 
enemy,  but  ourselves,  when  the  suffering  is  past,  when  we 
are  humbled  and  wearied,  our  pride  utterly  vanquished, 
when  all  seems  lost,  "we,  too,  shall  be  called  out  into  the 
light.  I  know  that  it  seems  hard,  that  one  bewails  the  seem- 
ing waste  of  the  process,  that  we  would  rather  at  the  out- 
set secure  our  final  freedom  as  a  gift  from  on  high  rather 
than  through  our  own  bleeding  and  panting.  But  until  we, 
until  all  mankind,  shall  learn  honor  and  justice  and  right, 
no  lasting  and  genuine  peace  can  be  ours.  It  would  be 
opium,  sleep,  a  hazy  lotus-dream, — not  the  seraphic  clarion 
of  true  peace,  a  call  to  the  spirit  aroused,  a  gentle  and  pas- 
sionate lifting  of  all  eyes  and  straining  of  all  limbs  forward 
and  upward.  That  is  God's  law.  When  will  the  world  take 
it  to  heart? 

"For  the  Lord  is  our  Judge, 
The  Lord  is  our  Lawgiver, 
The  Lord  is  our  King; 
He  will  save  us." 

— Amen. 


3araH,  Smtattt  or 


A  Discourse  at 
Temple  Keneseth  Israel. 


By  RABBI  JAMES  G.  HELLER. 


Philadelphia,  January  i$th,  1918. 


The  rapid  enactment  by  Congress  of  such  legislation  as 
Prohibition  and  Woman- Suffrage  seems  to  demonstrate  again 
a  fact  proven  repeatedly  during  the  ages  of  war  intensifies 
history— that  war  is  a  "forcing-house"  of  gov-  Our  Problems- 
ernment.  Men  forget  the  petty  differences  and  the  cowardly 
conservatisms  that  have  turned  their  gaze  from  the  inevita- 
ble future.  Co-operation,  efficiency,  rapidity  of  production 
must  be  secured,  and  for  once  the  mass  shakes  off  its  leth- 
argy, frees  itself  from  the  habitual  inertia  that  obstructs, 
genuine  progress.  War  adds  a  poignant  definiteness  espe- 
cially to  those  problems  of  social  organization  and  of  spir- 
itual adjustment,  about  which  so  much  vague  thinking  has 
been  done.  War  stirs  the  human  spirit  to  its  depth,  until  all 
worldly  possessions  are  subordinated  to  immaterial,  intangi- 
ble ideals, — liberty,  justice,  and  democracy.  Through  the 
great  mind  and  heart  of  our  prophet-president,  Woodrow 
Wilson,  the  American  people  has  come  to  a  spiritual  rebirth. 
We  have  dedicated  ourselves  anew  to  those  principles  of 
liberty  and  of  the  equality  of  nations  and  of  individuals  that 
first  brought  this  nation  into  being.  Every  feeling,  every 
yearning,  every  problem  that  stirred  vaguely  has  been  inten- 


i8 

sified  and  emphasized  until  it  urges  itself  upon  us  for  expres- 
sion or  solution. 

A  month  or  so  ago  I  strove  to  show  how  the  thought 
of  men  has  been  aroused  as  to  the  nature  of  the  Deity,  what 
Israel's  Piti-  new  ideas  have  been  formulated,  and  how 
these  are  to  be  appraised  as  compared  with 
the  fundamentals  of  Jewish  conviction.  This  morning  I 
shall  try  to  review  another  religious  and  Jewish  question 
which  war  has  made  a  painful  reality  for  every  thinking, 
feeling  Jew  and  Jewess.  Can  any  one  of  us  be  oblivious  to 
the  status  of  Israel  among  the  nations  ?  Is  our  Jewish  con- 
sciousness become  so  weak  that,  even  while  with  bated  breath 
we  follow  the  perilous  course  of  mankind's  hopes  in  the  war, 
we  cannot  also  melt  with  pity  for  the  indescribable  suffer- 
ings of  our  brethren  abroad,  in  Poland,  Roumania,  or  Pales- 
tine ?  Touchingly  loyal  to  his  native  land  wherever  he  may 
be,  yielding  to  none  in  patriotism  and  self-sacrifice,  the  Jew 
has  yet  had  to  plunge  his  bayonet  into  the  heart  of  his 
brother-Jew.  What  a  world-tragedy !  And  yet,  behind  the 
lines,  where  there  is  no  exaltation  and  glamour  of  combat, 
where  the  heroic  deaths  of  sons  and  brothers  should*  have 
won  surcease  of  oppression; — rapine,  starvation,  exile,  ter- 
ror, death ;  men  and  women  piled  into  freight-cars  like  cattle, 
some  of  which  were  opened  to  find  only  a  mass  of  rotting 
flesh!  In  Palestine  the  Turkish  government  turned  upon 
the  Jewish  colonists  as  enemies;  in  Russia,  not  even  the 
triumph  of  the  Revolution,  in  which  the  Jews  have  had  so 
large  a  share,  has  halted  the  old  cry  of  "Hep,  Hep!",  nor 
solaced  those  two  and  a  half  million  homeless  wanderers. 

But  it  is  not  my  intention  to  appeal  to  you  for  the 
Jewish  war-sufferers.  That  story  has  already  been  told 
s  irituai  '  more  graphically  and  affectingly  than  is  in 

problem  to  mv  power.  My  purpose  is  solely  to  present 

Be  Treated. 

to  you  as  dispassionately  as  possible  the  spir- 
itual problem  which  this  situation  has  rendered  unbearably 


acute.  Even  before  the  war  those  whose  Jewish  sympathies 
were  keen,  and  whose  knowledge  of  our  position  was  broad 
enough,  had  felt  the  urgency  of  some  solution,  some  change. 
Within  the  limited  time  at  my  disposal  this  morning  I  shall 
not  attempt  to  present  to  you  -all  the  solutions  that  have  been 
proposed.  That  which  appears  to  me  the  most  hopeful  of 
all,  and  which  now  seems  almost  a  reality,  Zionism,  I  shall 
keep  for  another  occasion. 

What  was  the   status   of   the  Jew   before   the   war? 
Although  spread  over  the  face  of  the  globe,  citizen  of  every 
land,  the  greatest  center  of  Jewish  population     condition  of 
was  in  "unholy"  Russia.    We  all  know  what     Jewry  Before 

the  War. 

the  condition  of  the  Russian  Jews  has  been, 
the  economic  and  political  enslavement  that  has  been  their 
lot.  But  oppression  has  ever  been  for  the  Jew,  with  his 
racial  and  religious  tenacity,  a  preservative  rather  than  a 
destructive  force.  In  Germany,  and  to  some  extent  in 
France,  the  Jew  had  to  contend  against  the  typically  modern 
and  German  movement  known  as  Antisemitism.  This  so- 
called  "philosophy  of  history"  condemned  the  Jew  as  a 
racial  inferior.  But  this  was  only  a  pretext  for  using  him 
as  a  scape-goat  for  sins  that  would  otherwise  have  been 
heaped  upon  the  shoulders  either  of  the  clerical  parties,  the 
Junkers,  the  military,  or  Czarism  and  the  landed  aristocracy. 
In  western  lands  assimilation  and  intermarriage  were  rap- 
idly sapping  Jewish  racial  vitality,  and  eating  into  Jewish 
solidarity.  Except  for  a  few  strong  centripetal  movements, 
such  as  Zionism,  or  some  varieties  of  neo-orthodoxy,  Juda- 
ism and  the  Jew  seemed  slowly  but  surely  disintegrating. 

Up  to  the  time  when  the  doctrines  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution  forced  an  entrance  into  the  oppressive   systems  ot 
Germany  and  Austria,  the  Jew  had  been  living 
a  kind  of  segmentary  national  life,  —  a  ghetto- 


nation,   like   a  group  of   Polynesian   islands     Ages;  ms 

Comparative 

lapped  by  the  all-encompassing  waters  of  for-     sterility. 
eign  civilizations.     And,  despite  the  scholars 


20 

and  men  of  genius  that  were  produced  during  these  ages, 
and  under  these  conditions,  I  for  one  regard  the  entire  time 
as  one  of  comparative  quiescence  and  sterility,  perhaps  be- 
cause of  the  very  isolation  that  was  the  lot  of  nearly  all 
Jewry.     And  so  did  all  Reform  thinkers  argue,  with  their 
earlier  abhorrence  of  the  Talmud  and  the  mediaeval  legalistic 
system, — until    their    reaction    against    nationalism    caused 
them  to  execute  an  "about-face"  in  this  respect.     Not  from 
the  Jew  came  the  spirit  that  transformed  Europe  from  its 
mediaeval  darkness  into  the  bright  day  of  the  modern  era, — 
much  as  we  may  iterate  our  boast  of  the  part  played  by  Jews 
in  the  preservation  of  the  Aristotelian  texts.    It  is  true  that 
the  French  Revolution  had  teachers  among  the  Jews,  but, 
as  Leroy-Beaulieu  puts  it,  "they  were  not  men  versed  in  the 
Talmud  of  the  Ashkenazim  or  the  Sephardim ;  they  were 
rather  the  old  nabis  of  Israel,  the  Isaiahs,  the  Jeremiahs, 
the  Ezekiels,  who  after  their  own  fashion  were  great  revo- 
lutionists."   We  may  boast,  as  many  of  us  do,  that  the  model 
of  the  American  Constitution  is  to  be  found  in  the  Bible, — 
but  Adams,  Washington, .  and  Jefferson  needed  no  lessons 
in  this  field  from  the  Jewries  of  Europe  and  Africa.     The 
Jew  is  an  imitator,  not  an  initiator  of  the  transforming  ideas 
of  modernism.    The  history  of  Reform  Judaism  itself  dem- 
onstrates this  clearly.    The  spirit  that  changed  the  Jew  into 
a  man  of  the  age,  that  caused  him  to  modernize  and  to  ration- 
alize his  cult,  to  strive  for  secular  education  and  social  ad- 
vancement,— that  spirit  did  not  come  from  the  Jew.     Only 
slowly  and  against  stubborn  opposition  did  it  gain  an  en- 
trance.   In  modern  times,  too,  the  Jews  have  been  receptive 
and  not  originative.    I  feel  as  proud  as  does  anyone  of  the 
achievements  of  the  Jew.     I  know  the  conditions  against 
which  he  had  to  contend,   and  the  glorious   relation   of 
achievement  to  opportunity.    And  yet,  with  all  these  mental 
and  spiritual  reservations,  it  cannot  be  contended  success- 


21 

fully  that  the  Jew  has  given  the  world  great,  original,  epoch- 
making  spirits — since  the  fall  of  Jerusalem.  There  could 
have  been  no  Spinoza  without  a  Descartes,  no  Moses  Men- 
delssohn without  a  Voltaire,  no  Philo  without  a  Plato  and 
an  Aristotle,  nor  Maimonides  without  Plato,  Aristotle,  and 
the  Arabic  Aristotelian  philosophers.  New  ideas  had  a  hard 
time  entering  the  synagogue.  But  it  could  not  have  been 
otherwise,  since  centuries  of  sequestration  and  oppression 
had  rendered  the  Jew  stubbornly  conservative. 

But  at  last  the  ghetto-gates  were  opened  from  without, 
and  the  great  opportunity  came.  Let  me  quote  Leroy-Beau- 
lieu  ("Israel  Among  the  Nations")  again: 

Emancipation 

"While  others  hail  the  victory  on  Zion,  they     Has  caused 

,,         .  .  Disintegration. 

ask  themselves  whether  Israel  s  triumph  is  not 
to  be  looked  upon  as  the  prelude  to  her  fall,  and  whether 
the  emancipation  of  Judah  is  not  to  end  in  its  utter  sub- 
mersion, its  engulfment  by  the  nations."  Assimilation  and 
intermarriage,  alienation  and  indifference,  have  grown  with 
alarming  rapidity  in  exactly  those  countries  where  freedom 
has  come  to  the  Jew.  What  then  are  we  to  do?  Can  this 
tide  be  stemmed  ?  Or  are  we  doomed  to  dissolution  and  dis- 
appearance from  the  world-stage,  after  a  history  of  three 
thousand  years? 

The  answer  of  Orthodoxy  to  this  question  is  to  try  to 
weather  the  storm,  to  ride  it  out,  to  stick  fast  to  everything, 
and  to  hope  for  an  abatement  of  the  wind,     orthodoxy 
The  sincere  orthodox  do  believe  that  the  time     F1ghts  a 

Losing  Battle. 

is  coming  when  men  will  resume  the  old  alle  • 
giances,  will  once  more  submit  to  the  old  sanctions,  the  old 
safeguards,  the  old  ceremonials.  But,  in  the  meantime,  the 
younger  generation  is  deserting  the  ship  by  companies.  Few 
indeed  will  be  those  who  will  sail  the  ship  of  orthodoxy 
within  the  next  few  years.  The  times  are  too  much  for 
them, — the  heart  of  the  people  answers  ever  more  faintly  to 


22 

the  antique  call-to-arms  of  the  Shofar.    Orthodoxy  is  wrest-  ^ 
ling  with  the  angel  of  modernity  itself.     It  cannot  prevail 
without  some  stronger  spiritual,  or  human,  impulse. 

The  focal  point  of  the  problem,  to  my  way  of  thinking, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  compromise  which  Reform  has  pro- 
posed and  put  into  effect.  It  is  particularly  this  view  that  T 
wish  to  examine  this  morning,  to  determine  whether  it  has 
stood  the  test  of  time,  and  whether  —  "sub  specie  aeterni- 
tatis"  —  the  moment  has  not  come  to  modify  or  to  revaluate 
it  somewhat. 

Some  two  and  a  half  years  ago  I  attempted  to  show 

that  Reform  Judaism  has  a  fundamental  inconsistency  in  its 

attitude  toward  ceremonial  and  toward  creed. 

The  Genesis  In  regard  to  the  former  it  is  professedly  and 

of  the  Idea  of  .  .       . 

a  Jewish  emphatically    evolutionist.       Ceremonies    are 


considered  no  more  than  the  temporary  em- 
judaism.  bodiments  of  religious  concepts.  They  are, 

then,  not  eternally  binding.  Ceremonies  were 
made  for  man,  not  man  for  ceremonies  (as  our  rabbis  so 
often  paraphrase  the  New  Testament).  We  are  at  liberty 
to  modify  them  whenever  it  suits  our  changing  notions  of 
religion.  It  is  not  merely  our  privilege  but  our  duty  so  to 
change  them,  that  they  may  conform  to  modern  standards, 
that  they  may  appeal  to  our  instincts  of  propriety,  decorum, 
and  above  all  to  our  "reason."  Although  Reform  retained 
what  it  considered  the  most  important  festivals  and  customs 
as  essentially  and  expressively  Jewish,  this  evolutionary 
viewpoint  naturally  exposed  it  to  the  variations  of  individ- 
ual preference.  There  was  the  danger  that  arose  as  a  result 
of  the  impairment  of  the  old  authority,  the  old  sanctions. 
Perhaps  it  is  because  of  this  that  the  single  synagogue  has 
become  so  decidedly  the  unit  of  authority  in  Reform  Juda- 
ism of  today.  The  early  leaders,  the  pioneers  of  the  move- 
ment, realized  the  danger  clearly  enough.  They  did  feel  the 


23 

necessity  for  setting  a  barrier,  for  fixing  some  elements  of 
the  religion  that  could  not  be  transgressed,  that  might  con- 
stitute the  eternal  and  unalterable  sanction  for  this  new  and 
modernized  faith.  Although  their  central  purpose  was  to 
revitalize  the  .religion,  although  they  had  a  naive,  implicit 
confidence  in  the  restorative  influence  of  modernism  itself, 
although  it  was  their  conviction  that  the  searchlight  of  ra- 
tionalism would  of  itself  point  the  pathway  for  the  new 
Jew, — still  they  realized  that  they  must  not  go  too  far,  even 
though  it  involved  them  in  inconsistency.  And  it  was  be- 
cause of  this  kind  of  reasoning,  it  seems  to  me,  that  they 
seized  upon  the  idea  of  a  Jewish  Mission, — not  in  the  strict 
old  sense  of  a  people  that  had  had  a  special  revelation  at 
Mount  Sinai,  a  people  with  which  the  Lord  had  made  a 
unique  covenant,  a  people  that  He  had  singled  out  to  be  a 
"kingdom  of  priests."  No!  to  them  the  Jewish  mission  was 
a  form  of  allegiance  to  a  set  of  doctrines.  Reform  Judaism 
was  to  be  primarily  "prophetic  Judaism."  Out  of  the  creed 
of  the  Jew  it  expunged  those  tenets  that  seemed  irrational 
(such  as  that  of  a  personal  Messiah,  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead,  the  literal  inspiration  of  the  Torah),  and  those  that 
seemed  to  these  latest  of  the  law-givers  antagonistic  to  the 
civic  and  social  aspirations  of  the  modernized  Jew  (namely, 
the  prayers  and  longings  for  a  restoration  of  the  Jewish 
nation  in  Palestine).  What  then  remained ?  Those  univer- 
salistic  principles  of  monotheism,  of  justice,  of  morality,  of 
an  all-conquering  brotherhood,  and  of  immortality.  Of 
course,  it  must  be  said  that  out  of  the  religion  of  the  prophets 
they  omitted  those,  teachings  that  did  not  accord  with  their 
own  ideas  of  a  millennium.  For  there  can  be  little  doubt 
but  that  the  prophets,  with  all  their  scathing  denunciation  of 
Judah  and  Israel,  were  patriotic  and  fervent  nationalists. 
But,  at  any  rate,  this  was  to  be  the  Jewish  Mission.  These 
great  principles  the  Jew  was  to  teach  the  world.  Scattered 


24 

among  the  nations  he  was  to  be  an  eternal  witness  to  God's 
truth,  by  word  and  example  to  impregnate  humanity  with 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  Brotherhood  of  Man.  It 
was  the  opinion  of  the  founders  of  Reform  Judaism  that 
this  Mission  would  suffice  to  keep  the  Jew  alive;  devotion 
to  this  glorious  task  would  be  stimulus  enough  to  preserve 
him  intact  in  the  midst  of  the  Diaspora.  In  brief,  he  was 
to  be  the  Servant  of  the  Reform  Jewish  Prophetic  Ideal. 

I  shall  not  point  out  to  you,  as  I  did  on  the  former 
occasion,  that  this  theory  of  the  Jewish  Mission  is  incon- 
objections  sistent  with  an  evolutionary  view  of  the 

Beacitedght  world,  that  it  forgets  that  ideas  and  ideals 

also  are  subject  to  change,  that  they  are  pic- 
tures, glorious  pictures,  hopes  blazoned  by  winged  spirits 
upon  the  canvas  of  the  Future.  I  shall  not  comment  further 
on  the  arrogance  of  this  project,  its  assumption  that  no  other 
nation  has  learned  the  lessons  of  the  prophets  as  have  we,— 
its  complete  disregard  for  the  essence  of  every  human  prob- 
lem —  the  application  of  abstract  principle  to  concrete  prac- 
tice. I  shall  devote  myself  solely  to  the  task  of  examining 
the  inner  worth  of  the  conception  itself. 

And  I  for  one  am  ready  to  admit  that  in  the  attempt  to 
put  this  conception  of  a  Jewish  Mission  into  practice  we 
have  failed.     One  does  not  thereby  disparage 
^e    unassailable    nobility    of    the    prophetic 


idea,—  and  dicta,  nor  the  undoubted  service  of  Reform 

Some  Modern 

Panaceas.  in  helping  to  preserve  the  Jewish   faith  by 

winning  the  loyalty  and  adherence  of  many 
who  would  otherwise  have  been  completely  lost.  But  today, 
for  the  past  five  or  six  years,  there  has  been  something  lack- 
ing. Everyone  feels  it,  and  has  felt  it.  There  has  been 
more  than  the  usual  grumbling  about  the  indifference  of 
our  young  men  and  young  women,  more  than  the  usual  lot 
of  panaceas  suggested.  One  man,  with  commendable  sin- 


25 

cerity  at  least,  tried  to  lead  the  way  back  to  a  kind  of  "latter- 
day"  orthodoxy.  Another,  of  a  more  philosophic  and  cyn- 
ical, less  impetuous,  turn  of  mind,  trumpeted  forth  his  "dis- 
covery" that  the  rabbis  were  lacking  in  "spirituality,"  and 
that  the  acquisition  and  proclamation  from  the  pulpit  of 
this  highly  elusive  commodity  would  bring  the  young  Jew 
and  Jewess  "back  to  the  synagogue."  Still  another,  evi- 
dently more  prone  to  a  fatalistic  reading  of  history,  claimed 
that  naught  but  suffering,  hardships,  reverses,  could  bring 
us  to  our  senses.  To  my  mind,  all  these  analyses  and  pallia- 
tives fall  far  short  of  any  possible  success. 

Our  probe  must  go  far  deeper,  if  we  are  to  find  the 
canker  that  has  been  gnawing  at  the  vitals  of  Jewish  life. 
Without  doubt  we  have  been  deeply,  almost 

r  J  The  Cause 

incommensurably,    affected    by    the    radical     Must  Be 

,  ,  .  .    .  .  Within  the 

change  of  both  physical  and  spiritual  environ-  jewish  soul. 
ment  that  the  last  eighty  years  have  brought 
with  them.  And  yet,  unless  we  believe  that  the  Jew  is 
utterly  devoid  of  innate  power  or  genius,  that  our  history  is 
entirely  due  to  the  operation  of  forces  utterly  outside  the 
Jewish  mind,  the  Jewish  soul,  —  unless  we  are  prepared  to 
throw  overboard  at  one  stroke  all  our  hopes,  all  our  pride 
in  past  accomplishment;  then  we  must  look  for  the  trouble 
within  ourselves,  in  some  change  in  our  spirits,  in  our  meth- 
ods, in  our  attitude.  Or,  to  be  more  concise,  we  are  faced 
with  the  alternative  of  an  acceptance  to  the  full  of  an  assim- 
ilationist  policy,  or  of  a  .revitalization  of  Jewish  self-con- 
sciousness and  of  Jewish  self-determination. 

Here  lies  the  canker!  Our  modern  philosophy,  our 
Reform  "mission-idea"  is  still  instinct  with  ghetto-servility. 
We  are  still  servants,  not  masters.  We  are 

The  Jew  Must 

slaves  of  the  lamp,  not  its  Aladdin-masters  at     Be  Made 


whose  call  troop  the  transforming  Genii.  We 
are  the  servants  of  an  ideal,  not  its  masters. 
We  have  tried  to  sink  the  Jew  in  his  own  achievements.  We 


26 

have  robbed  those  glorious  prophetic  truths  of  their  living 
meaning,  —  because  we  have  made  them  an  end  not  a  means, 
because  we  have  dogmatized  them,  because  we  have  cast  them 
into  a  superhuman  system,  because  we  have  bent  the  knee  tj 
the  ideals  of  men,  have  made  of  them  towering,  symmetrical, 
implacable  —  idols!  Surely  we  have  the  right  to  glory  in 
our  ancestry,  in  the  services  rendered  by  our  forefathers  to 
all  mankind.  The  productivity  of  national  life  as  compared 
with  the  Diaspora,  denied  by  so  many  Reform  rabbis,  is 
best  shown  by  .the  tenacity  with  which  they  themselves 
cling  to  the  vestiges  of  that  national  life  in  its  noblest  ex- 
pression. But,  are  we,  therefore,  to  doom  our  young  men 
and  women  to  an  eternal  repetition  of  the  lessons  of  two 
thousand  years  ago?  Shall  we,  to  twist  the  Napoleonic 
aphorism,  be  condemned  forever  to  be  descendants  rather 
than  ancestors  ?  Our  theologians  may  hide  themselves  from 
their  own  flesh;  they  may  veil  their  .eyes  from  the  truth; 
they  may  try  to  persuade  us  that  we  must  convert  the  na- 
tions to  ideas  which  they  themselves  have  carried  farther 
than  we  in  the  last  five  hundred  years.  But  they  cannot 
hoodwink  the  young,  those  whose  spirits  are  still  untamed, 
who  are  unwilling  to  bend  the  neck  to  any  yoke  that  time 
may  try  to  set  upon  them.  We  must  give  them  the  truth! 
Their  souls  must  be  kindled  by  life-giving  realities,  their 
ardent  yearnings  caught  with  a  manly  vision,  —  or  they  will 
continue  to  fall  away  into  spiritual  desuetude,  they  will  turn 
their  searching  gaze  to  other  fields.  And  Judaism  will  con- 
tinue to  languish  and  to  pale  —  without  the  infusion  of  new, 
red  blood. 

Let  us  have  no  more  of  this  slave-religion,  even  though 
it  be  dignified  with  the  names  of  Isaiah,  Micah,  and  Jere- 
miah.   If  they  could  be  here,  with  what  with- 
ering  scorn  would  they  view  the  doctrines 


.  taught  in  their  names!     Do  these  words  of 

Prophetic. 

Isaiah   sound   like    servile,    mere   missionary 


faith?  "Why  sayest  them,  O  Jacob,  And  speakest,  O 
Israel :  'My  way  is  hid  from  the  Lord,  And  my  right  is 
passed  over  by  my  God'  ?  Has  thou  not  known,  hast  thou 
not  heard  That  the  everlasting  God,  the  Lord,  The  Creator 
of  the  ends  of  the  earth,  Fainteth  not,  neither  is  weary?  His 
discernment  is  past  searching  out,  He  giveth  power  to  the 
faint ;  And  to  him  that  hath  no  might  He  increaseth  strength. 
Even  the  youths  shall  faint  and  be  weary,  And  the  young 
men  shall  utterly  fall ;  But  they  that  wait  for  the  Lord  shall 
renew  their  strength;  They  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as 
eagles;  They  shall  run  and  not  be  weary;  They  shall  walk 
and  not  be  faint." 

In  the  days  of  old,  according  to  the  book  of  Exodus, 
when  a  Hebrew  slave  had  served  the  term  of  his  servitude 
and  still  wished  to  stay  with  his  master,  he 

J  Results  of 

was  taken  to  the  post  of  the  threshold  and  a  our  shifting 
nail  hammered  through  his  ear  into  the  door- 
post, as  a  symbol  of  life-long  enslavement.  We  have  tried 
to  nail  our  young  to  the  doorpost  as  slaves.  We  have  dis- 
trusted our  own  strength,  our  own  ability  to  go  forward 
unfettered  and  free.  And  retribution  is  upon  us.  Realiza- 
tion and  reaction  are  coming  now.  We  must  be  our  own 
masters,  in  doctrine  as  in  ceremonial,  in  the  spirit  as  in  the 
letter,  in  the  harmonious  and  complete  unfolding  of  all  our 
potentialities.  First  of  all,  we  must  have  racial  unity,  co- 
ordination of  our  powers,  consciousness  of  the  physical 
aspect  of  Jewish  social  integrity,  a  Center  from  which  shall 
radiate  cultural  and  spiritual  revivification,  "pride  of  race," 
staunch  and  sturdy  Jewishness.  Let  this  Jewishness  be 
compounded  of  proud  knowledge  of  the  past,  and  of  an 
immediate  and  impulsive  reaction  to  the  opportunities  of 
the  present.  Then  body  and  soul  will  glow  with  the  desire 
for  achievement,  not  for  ourselves  alone,  but  for  all  men, 
the  joy  of  service,  of  unstinted  loyalty  to  the  call  of  our 
own  blood ! 


28 

I  see  a  vision  rising  before  me.  Deep  darkness  veils 
the  earth.  And  out  of  the  interminable  night  comes  sob- 
A  vision  bing  and  wailing, — the  tramp,  tramp,  tramp 

of  marching  feet, — the  weary  dragging  of 
other  feet  treading  the  path  of  exile.  Here  gleams  for  a 
moment  the  fitful  flame  of  a  forlorn  hope,  a  little  island  of 
light  in  the  ebony  waters  of  the  night;  there  the  mild  glow 
of  a  lamp,  the  calm  faces  of  men  whose  souls  do  not  fear 
the  dark.  But  over  all  the  stifling  pall!  Far  off  there  of  a 
sudden  a  thin  line  stretches,  cleaving  the  night  into  earth 
and  sky.  Pale  saffron  brightens  into  rosy-fingered  morn. 
Dawn  approaches  with  its  iris-hued  heralds.  And  on  the 
furrowed  ground  lie  thousands  of  prostrate,  grey  figures. 
Out  of  their  midst  rises  a  youth,  as  radiant  as  the  morn. 
He  awakens  out  of  his  long,  Endymion-like  trance.  He 
feels  the  lethargy  passing  from  his  thews  and  sinews,  and 
he  rises  to  greet  the  dawn  with  a  glad  song  of  praise  to  God 
in  the  Highest.  At  last,  face  luminous,  with  springing  step, 

high-hearted,  he  strides  into  the  Dawn.  t 

— Amen. 


A  DISCOURSE  AT  TEMPLE  KENESETH  ISRAEL. 


By  RABBI  JAMES  G.  HELLER. 


Philadelphia,  February  3rd,  1918. 


In  the  course  of  the  last  two  months  I  have  spoken  to 
you  on  two  issues  that  have  become  crucial  during  the  last 
few  years, — our  modern  conceptions  of  God  original  Plan 
and  of  Israel.  It  was  my  plan  to  review  in  of  Discourse- 
turn  the  chief  tenets  of  Reform  Jewish  theology  in  the 
light  of  the  latest  developments,  and  to  the  best  of  my  ability 
to  reinterpret  them.  But,  when  I  came  to  consider  how  I 
should  treat  my  next  topic,  I  was  at  once  confronted  by  a 
most  distressing  problem.  Next  in  order  would  naturally 
have  come  the  question  of  the  reality  of  the  soul,  of  its 
independent  existence,  and  of  its  permanence.  My  first 
intention  was  to  review  for  you  the  various  philosophical 
concepts  of  our  day,  to  tell  you  of  how  science— physical 
and  physiological — has  claimed  to  reduce  soul  to  brain,  to 
prove  spirit  no  more  than  an  evanescent  appearance  on  the 
surface  of  an  utterly  material  universe.  What  would  have 
been  simpler  than  to  point  out  the  tendencies  of  the  diver- 
gent schools  of  modern  psychology,  of  those  on  the  one 
hand  who  try  to  split  up  the  mind  into  a  bundle  of  percep- 
tions and  emotions  beneath  which  is  no  comprehensive; 
unity, — or  on  the  other  hand  those  whose  scientific  analyses 
— enforced  perhaps  by  their  religious  intuitions — have  con- 
vinced them  that  every  individual  is  a  unique,  substantial, 
and  independent  spirit?  All  these  are  issues  of  thought  thaj: 
need  some  reconcilement  with  our  progressive  practical 
needs,  and  that  are  distinctly  religious,  as  I  have  already  in- 
dicated, in  their  implications.  As  the  plan  of  this  discourse 


30 

grew  in  my  mind,  however,  I  was,  as  I  have  said,  confronted 
by  a  problem,  and  a  most  perplexing  one!  And  I  find  that 
today  I  must  put  it  before  you  with  the  utmost  frankness. 

Within  the  last  year  my  attention  has  been  absorbed 
considerably  with  reading  and  thinking  upon  a  great  ques- 
tion. And  the  more  I  have  read,  the  deeper  I 
ideas  Forced  a       have  been  drawn,   the  more  firmly  have  1 

Change.  _  .  , 

become  convinced  of  my  duty  to  speak  to 
you  of  the  matter.  At  the  same  time  I  could  not  but  ieel 
keenly  the  judgment  which  most  men  would  naturally  pass 
upon  such  an  undertaking.  I  was  conscious  of  a  certain 
timidity  in  braving  what  appeared  an  almost  unanimous 
verdict,  in  flaunting  a  truth  that  might  carry  no  conviction. 
But  when  I  came  face  to  face  with  the  question  of  how  I 
should  speak  to  you  of  the  nature  and  permanence  of  the 
soul,  I  could  not  but  choose  to  tell  you  what  I  feel  to  be  the 
truth.  I  know  all  the  dangers  entailed.  I  realize  the  diffi- 
culty of  presenting  the  subject  at  all  adequately  in  this 
manner.  And  yet  the  hope  would  not  down  that  some  of 
you  might  be  led,  even  though  through  opposition,  to  inves- 
tigate and  to  ponder  for  yourselves. 

For  the  time  has  come  for  men  to  speak  out  on  this 
matter  of  the  Soul  and  of  Death !    Our  brothers  and  sisters 

in  Europe  need  solace .  as  never  before, 
compeifrhought  Almost  every  family  has  had  reft  irom  it 

hopeful,  valiant  young  lives,  passed  irretriev- 
ably on  to  the  Great  Beyond.  The  hearts  of  many  men 
have  been  deluged  with  burning  tears.  We -pray  God  for 
a  speedy,  and  an  honorable^  peace.  But  the  prospect  of 
trial  by  fire  seems  inevitable  for  us  too.  Even  now  the 
apprehension  of  what  is  to  come  seems  trembling  upon  the 
verge  of  our  souls.  How  many  souls  have  been  hurled  out 
of  the  smug  complacency  of  our  own  thoughtless,  luxurious 
living  into  the  presence,  the  omnipresence  of  Death !  How 
many  of  those  totally  unprepared  spiritually,  immature 
souls,  have  been  summoned  to  surrender  their  dearest  on 
earth  to  an  untimely  grave!  Over  the  battlefields  of 


31 

Europe  there  is  a  great  Exodus.  Out  of  the  mangled  and 
trampled  and  sodden  bodies  march  the  souls  of  the  slain. 
Victor  and  vanquished,  friend  and  foe,  soldier  and  civilian, 
join  in  that  gaunt  procession.  Out  into  the  vast  Unseen, 
beyond  the  horizon,  it  winds  from  the  embattled  fields  oi 
Belgium,  France,  and  Poland.  Unless  your  imagination  is 
utterly  extinct,  you  cannot  escape  the  pity,  the  horror,  and 
sphinx-riddle  of  it  all.  I  have  always  felt  a  strong  taith 
in  immortality, — and  yet  I  could  not  avoid  many  hours  of 
bitter  dejection,  of  despair, — the  haunting  picture  ot  youth, 
sunny,  spring-like,  hurling  itself  with  a  song  into  the  black 
jaws  of  death.  The  world  seemed  a  wintry  place  indeed, 
aged  and  joyless. 

I  chanced  to  pick  up  a  book  by  Lombroso  called  "After 
Death — What?",  which  reviewed  a  series  of  strange  experi- 
ments with  a  woman  by  the  name  of  Eusapia 
Palladino.  The  book  was  startling  in  the  Rlac'tfon  to 
extreme.  I  had  heard  and  read  vaguely  of 
the  ideas  it  contained,  of  supernatural  phenomena,  of  lumin- 
c  us  bodies,  moving  tables,  messages  and  communications 
purporting  to  come  from  the  "dead", — but  all  these  things 
nad  meant  naught  to  me.  For  years  I  had  passed  them  by 
without  a  serious  thought.  Lombroso's  book  was  far  from 
convincing  me  of  the  reality  of  the  phenomena  retailed.  I 
had  always  felt  the  great  truth  of  immortality;  to  me  it 
was  an  intuitive  reality,  a  postulate  implied  by  every  reli- 
gious concept.  But  I  had  been  trained  in  the  rat'onalistic 
school  of  our  day,  taught  to  look  askance  even  at  the  mira- 
cles related  in  Bible-stories.  I  had  been  thoroughly  impreg- 
nated with  the  typical,  modern  religion  of  ethics.  And  yet, 
deep  down,  there  was  in  my  heart  a  leaning  toward  mys- 
ticism, a  yearning  for  something  vaguely  felt,  restiveness 
under  the  galling  yoke  of  spiritual  barrenness.  I  strove  lor 
the  exaltation  of  beauty  of  sight  and  sound ;  I  strove  to  feel 
more  clearly  the  essentially  miraculous  in  the  souls  of  all 
men.  Perhaps  it  was  for  this  reason  that,  although  I  was  far 
from  convinced  by  Lombroso,  I  was  nevertheless  deeply 


32 

interested.  When,  therefore,  there  appeared  a  short  time 
afterward  a  book  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  purporting  to  prove 
the  continued  existence  of  his  son  Raymond,  killed  on  the 
fields  of  Flanders,  I  seized  upon  it  and  read  it  with  avidity. 
Its  effect  was  marked.  There  was  in  it  much  that  was 
reasonable  and  appealing.  My  reason  struggled  against 
acceptance  of  its  theory,  while  something  deeper  prompted 
belief.  Out  of  the  chaos  of  my  earlier  reactions  rose  the 
conviction  that,  if  it  would  be  possible  to  establish  the  sur- 
vival of  the  soul  of  an  individual  after  death,  if  we  could 
communicate  in  even  one  case, — it  was  a  religious  truth 
which  no  sincere  minister,  no  seeker  after  the  truth,  could 
afford  to  neglect.  What  man  could  withhold  adherence  iv 
the  great  preachments  of  religion,  what  man  could  longer 
be  indifferent,  if  he  could  know  that  death  is  not  the  end, 
that  the  soul  alone  is  the  ultimate  reality^  that,  thereiore, 
spiritual  values  alone  have  permanency  ?  I  resolved  to  read 
as  deeply  as  possible  into  the  subject.  I  secured  possession 
of  as  many  of  the  books  on  the  subject  as  I  could  lay  hold 
of.  I  have  done  my  utmost  to  find  the  truth. 

And  it  is  for  this  reason  that  I  ask  you  to  bear  with 

me,  if  I  speak  to  you  this  morning  on  that  which  seems  so 

utterly  irreconcilable  with  the  tangible  reali- 

Must  Present 

Truth  AS  i  ties  of  your  everyday  lives.     Most  of  us  are 

Know  It.  J  J        J 

inclined  to  smile  cynically.  I  passed  through 
the  same  stage  myself.  And  yet,  this  morning,  I  am  forced 
to  this  strait,  that  I  must  either  accept  the  conclusion  that 
it  is  possible  to  receive  messages  from  the  spirit-world,  irom 
beyond  the  horizon  of  our  own  circumscribed  universe, — or 
rate  many  of  the  world's  greatest  scientists  and  thinkers  as 
fools  or  liars!  I  confess  herewith  that  I  have  had  no  direct 
experience  myself,  that  I  have  never  visited  a  "medium," 
that  I  rely  entirely  upon  a  mass  of  evidence  collected  by  the 
most  trustworthy  men  I  know  of.  But  is  not  all  science  too 
a  question  of  evidence  and  of  faith, — of  faith  in  the  good 
faith  of  the  investigator,  in  the  correctness  of  his  observa- 
tion? But  we  must  have  the  evidence  of  many  minds,  the 


33 

mass  of  truth  that  alone  can  point  to  the  existence  not  of 
an  isolated  "sport,"  or  exception,  but  of  a  current  of  reality, 
of  consistent  phenomena  for  which  we  must  frame  somt 
hypothesis.  Let  us  ask  first  whether  there  exists  today  any 
testimony  as  to  the  survival  of  personality  from  men  of 
notable  intellectual  probity. 

Most  men  and  women  think  that  this  entire  subject  is 
in  the  hands  of  the  ignorant, — that  there  are  a  lot  of  charla- 
tans and  fakers,  who  play  upon  the  credulity 
of  the  bereaved.     Without  a  doubt  there  are      some  Great 

r     ,  .  .  .  Minds. 

many  of  this  variety,  vampires  who  feed  upon 
the  heart's  blood  of  their  victims.  Such  vultures  seem  to 
smell  the  scent  of  dead  bodies  from  afar.  They  have  donc 
much  to  discredit  the  truth.  But  surely  one  must  think 
seriously  of  the  question,  aside  from  these  charlatans,  when 
such  a  man  as  Lombroso,  a  scientist  of  distinctly  materialis- 
tic leanings,  turns  aside,  ceases  scoffing,  abandons  the  sneer- 
ing position  with  which  he  started,  and  becomes  a  thorough 
believer  in  the  genuineness  of  "survival."  Against  such  a 
man,  and  against  the  others  whose  names  I  shall  cite,  it  is 
hard  to  bring  the  accusation  of  fraud  or  charlatanism. 
Humanly  mistaken  they  may  be.  But  as  in  almost  every 
field  of  human  thought  it  is  the  great  mass  of  evidence  that 
is  conclusive.  Sir  William  F.  Barrett  says  at  the  outset  of 
a  book  from  which  I  shall  quote  later:  ".  .  .  Speaking 
for  myself,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  affirm  that  a  careful  and 
dispassionate  review  of  my  own  experiments,  extending 
over  a  period  of  forty  years,  together  with  the  investigation 
of  the  evidence  of  competent  witnesses,  compels  my  belief 
in  Spiritualism,  as  so  defined."  "When  we  last  met,"  said 
Holman  Hunt  to  Ruskin,  "you  declared  you  had  given  up 
all  belief  in  immortality."  "I  remember  well,"  replied 
Ruskin,  "but  what  has  mainly  caused  the  change  in  my 
views  is  the  unanswerable  evidence  of  spiritualism.  I  know 
there  is  much  vulgar  fraud  and  stupidity  connected  with  it, 
but  underneath  there  is,  I  am  sure,  enough  to  convince  us 
that  there  is  personal  life  independent  of  the  body;  but  with 


34 

this  once  proved,  I  have  no  further  interest  in  spiritualism." 
Prof.  Sir  William  Crookes,  perhaps  the  leading  chemist  of 
the  world,  says  of  the  phenomena  of  spiritualism:  "My 
whole  scientific  education  has  been  one  long  lesson  in  exact- 
ness of  observation,  and  I  wish  to  be  distinctly  understood 
that  this  firm  conviction  is  the  result  of  most  careful  investi- 
gation." Gladstone,  the  great  Prime  Minister,  was  for 
many  years  a  member  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Researcn, 
and  said  at  one  time,  "Psychical  Research  is  the  most  im- 
portant work  which  is  being  done  in  the  world,  by  far  the 
most  important."  Dr.  Richard  Hodgson  tells  of  his  first 
meeting  with  the  famous  medium,  Mrs.  Piper:  "I  entered 
the  house  profoundly  materialistic,  not  believing  in  the  con- 
tinuance of  life  after  death,  and  today  I  simply  say,  I 
believe.  The  proof  has  been  given  to  me  in  such  a  way  as 
to  remove  from  me  the  possibility  of  a  doubt."  Let  me 
quote  a  few  words  from  a  letter  by  Dr.  Hyslop,  the  eminent 
psychologist,  who  has  now  identified  himself  with  Psychical 
Research:  "Nay,  in  my  servile  respect  for  the  classic  tra- 
ditipn  I  mocked  at  what  was  called  spiritism :  and  after 
reading  the  astounding  statements  which  Mr.  Crookes  had 
published,  I  allowed  myself — and  here  do  I  publicly  beg  his 
pardon  for  it — to  laugh  at  them  as  heartily  as  almost  every- 
one else  was  doing.  But  now  I  say  just  what  my  friend 
Ochorowicz  says  in  the  same  matter — I  beat  my  breast  and 
I  cry,  Tater,  peccavi'  (Father,  I  have  sinned)  !  How  could 
I  suppose  that  the  savant  (Crookes)  who  has  discovered 
thallium  and  the  radiometer,  and  foreshadowed  the  Roent- 
gen rays,  could  commit  gross  and  inexplicable  blunders,  and 
allow  himself  to  be  duped  for  years  by  tricks  which  a  child 
could  have  exposed  ?"  Immanuel  Kant,  the  torch-bearer  of 
modern  thought,  prophesies  in  these  words :  "At  some  future 
day  it  will  be  proved — I  cannot  say  when  and  where — that 
the  human  soul  is,  while  in  earth-life,  already  in  an  umnier- 
rupted  communication  with  those  living  in  another  world , 
that  the  human  soul  can  act  upon  those  beings,  and  receive, 
in  return,  impressions  of  them  without  being  conscious  of 


35 

it  in  the  ordinary  personality."  And  Alfred  Russel  Wal- 
lace, co-discoverer  with  Darwin  of  the  idea  of  evolution, 
great  mind  and  scholar,  says:  "Considerable  acquaintance 
with  the  literature  and  history  of  this  movement — in  which 
I  myself  have  taken  part  for  thirty-five  years — nas  failed 
to  show  me  one  single  case  in  which  any  man  who,  alter 
careful  inquiry,  has  become  convinced  of  the  truth  and 
reality  of  the  spiritual  phenomena,  has  afterward  discred- 
ited them  or  regarded  them  as  imposture  or  delusion.  And 
it  must  be  remembered  that  as  a  rule  all  educated,  and  espe- 
cially all  scientific  men,  come  to  the  investigation  of  this 
subject  with  a  very  strong  prejudice  against  it,  as  Demi, 
almost  certainly  based  on  credulity  and  fraud,  which  they 
will  easily  detect  and  expose."  I  might  name  many  eminent 
men  of  science  who  have  been  won  over  to  belief  in  personal 
survival  after  death  by  the  evidence  of  Psychical  Research. 
It  will  suffice  to  enumerate  Tennyson,  Lord  Leighton, 
Ruskin,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  Prof. 
Charles  Richet,  William  James,  Flammarion,  Schiaparelli ; 
and  Prof.  Henri  Bergson,  Dr.  Schiller  of  Oxford,  Prof. 
Gilbert  Murray,  and  Dr.  L.  P.  Jacks,  all  of  whom  have  been 
presidents  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research.  What 
.greater  jury  could  be  selected  than  these  great  names;  what 
stronger  testimony  could  there  be  than  that  of  the  years  of 
study  and  research  which  practically  every  one  of  them  has 
devoted  to  this  subject.  With  this  alone  there  would  be 
strong  reason  for  an  acceptance  of  their  conclusions.  But 
I  do  not  wish  you  to  decide  merely  by  names.  I  have  a 
large  number  of  interesting  instances  to  cite  to  you,  to  give 
you  an  idea  of  the  method  of  the  subject,  and  to  dip  for  a 
while  into  the  actual  evidence  itself.  Out  of  these  I  shall 
select  one  or  two  of  the  best. 

I  shall  quote  two  communications,  both  given  by  Sir 
William  F.  Barrett,  in  his  recent  book,  "On  the  Threshold 
of  the  Unseen."     "In  the  present  case  Mrs.      Two  Direct 
R.  was  the  automatist  (through  whose  hand      Instances- 
the  writing  came),  a  lady  known  for  some  years  to  Mr. 


36 

Fred  Myers,  and  of  whose  scrupulous  good  faith  there  can 
be  no  question.  .  .  ."  The  notes  of  the  sitting,  at  which  a 
Mr.  Wedgwood  (Mr.  Wedgwood  was  a  cousin  and  brother- 
in-law  of  Charles  Darwin)  was  present,  are  as  follows: 

THE  DAVID  BRAINERD  CASE. 

Oct.  loth,  Friday,  at  — ,  Mr.  Wedgwood  and  I  sitting.  The  board 
moved  after  a  short  pause  and  one  preliminary  circling. 

"David — David — David — dead  143  years." 

The  butler  at  this  moment  announced  lunch  and  Mr.  Wedgwood 
said  to  the  soi  disant  spirit,  "Will  you  go  on  for  us  afterwards,  as  we 
must  break  off  now !"  "I  will  try." 

During  lunch  Mr.  Wedgwood  was  reckoning  up  the  date  indicated 
as  1747,  and  conjecturing  that  the  control  was  perhaps  David  Hume, 
who,  he  thought,  had  died  about  then.  On  our  beginning  again  to  sit, 
the  following  was  volunteered: 

"I  am  not  Hume.  I  have  come  with  Theodora's  sister.  1  was 
attracted  to  her  during  her  life  in  America.  My  work  was  in  that  land, 
and  my  earthly  toil  was  cut  short  early,  as  hers  has  been.  I  died  at 
thirty  years  old.  I  toiled  five  years,  carrying  forward  the  lamp  ot 
God's  truth  as  I  knew  it." 

Mr.  Wedgwood  remarked  that  he  must  have  been  a  missionary. 

"Yes,  in  Susquehanna  and  other  places." 

"Can  you  give  any  name  besides  David?" 

"David  Bra — David  Brain — David  Braine — David  Brain." 

Mr.  W. :    "Do  you  mean  that  your  name  is  Braine  ?" 

"Very  nearly  right." 

Mr.  W. :   "Try  again." 

"David  Braine.  Not  quite  all  the  name ;  right  so  far  as  It  goes. 
.  .  .  I  was  born  in  1717." 

Mr.  W. :    "Are  you  an  American  ?" 

"America  I  hold  to  be  my  country  as  we  consider  things.  I  worked 
at —  "  (sentence  ends  with  a  line  of>"D"s). 

After  an  interval  Mr.  Wedgwood  said  he  thought  it  had  come  into 
his  head  who  our  control  was.  He  had  some  recollection  that  in  the 
i8th  century  a  man  named  David  Brainerd  was  missionary  to  the  North 
American  Indians.  We  sat  again  and  the  following  was  written : 

"I  am  glad  you  know  me.  I  had  not  power  to  complete  name  or 
give  more  details.  I  knew  that  secret  of  the  district.  It  was  guarded 
by  the  Indians,  and  was  made  known  to  two  independent  circles. 
Neither  of  them  succeeded,  but  the  day  will  come  that  will  uncover  the 
gold." 

It  was  suggested  that  this  meant  heavenly  truth. 

"I  spoke  of  earthly  gold." 

Mr.  Wedgwood  said  the  writing  was  so  faint  he  thought  power 
was  failing. 


37 

"Yes,  nearly  gone.  /  wrote  during  my  five  years  of  worn.  It 
kept  my  heart  alive." 

Mr.  Wedgwood  writes : 

I  could  not  think  at  first  where  I  had  ever. heard  of  Bramerd,  but 
I  learned  from  my  daughter  in  London  that  my  sister-in-law,  who  lived 
with  me  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  was  a  great  admirer  of  Brainerd,  and 
seemed  to  have  an  account  of  his  life,  but  I  am  quite  certain  that  1 
never  opened  the  book  and  knew  nothing  of  the  dates,  which  are  all 
correct,  as  well  as  his  having  been  a  missionary  to  the  Susquehannas. 
My  daughter  has  sent  me  extracts  from  his  life,  stating  that  he  was 
born  in  1718,  and  not  1717,  as  planchette  wrote.  But  the  biographical 
dictionary  says  that  he  died  in  1747,  aged  30. 

Mrs.  R.  writes  that  she  had  no  knowledge  whatever  of  David 
Brainerd  before  this. 

The  biographical  dictionary  gives  the  following : 

"Brainerd,  David.  A  celebrated  American  missionary,  who  signal- 
ized himself  by  his  successful  endeavors  to  convert  the  Indians  on  the 
Susquehanna,  Delaware,  etc.  Died,  aged  30,  1747." 

It  is  perhaps  noteworthy  in  connection  with  the  last  sentence  ot 
the  planchette  writing  that  in  the  life  of  Brainerd  by  Jonathan  Edwarus, 
extracts  given  from  his  journal  show  that  he  wrote  a  good  deal,  e.  g., 
"Feb.  3rd,  1744.  Could  not  but  write  as  well  as  meditate,"  etc.  "Feb. 
1 5th,  1/45.  Was  engaged  in  writing  almost  all  the  day."  He  invariably 
speaks  of  comfort  in  connection  with  writing. 

This  is  a  rather  convincing  case  of  the  appearance  ot 
a  personality  about  whom  only  one  of  those  present  at  the 
sitting  had  any  knowledge,  and  of  the  details  of  whose  life, 
given  in  the  communication,  none  of  them  knew.  I  cite 
one  more  of  the  many  interesting  cases  given  in  this  work: 

THE  ABRAHAM  FLORENTINE  CASE. 

In  August,  1874,  Mr.  Moses  was  staying  with  a  friend,  a  medical 
man,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  at  one  of  the  "sittings"  which  they  had 
together  a  communication  was  received  with  singular  impetuosity,  pur- 
porting to  be  from  a  spirit  who  gave  the  name  Abraham  Florentine, 
and  stated  that  he  had  been  engaged  in  the  United  States  war  of  i5i3, 
but  only  lately  had  entered  into  the  spiritual  world,  having  died  at 
Brooklyn,  U.  S.  A.,  on  August  5th,  1874,  at  the  age  of  83  years,  one 
month,  and  seventeen  days.  None  present  knew  of  such  a  person,  but 
Mr.  Moses  published  the  particulars  as  above  stated  in  a  London  news- 
paper, asking  at  the  same  time  American  journals  to  copy,  so  that,  if 
possible,  the  statements  might  be  verified  or  disproved. 

In  course  of  time  an  American  lawyer,  "a  claim-agent;'  who  had 
been  auditing  the  claims  of  soldiers  in  New  York,  saw  the  paragraph, 
and  wrote  to  an  American  newspaper,  to  say  that  he  had  come  across 


the  name  A.  Florentine,  and  that  a  full  record  of  the  person  who  made 
the  claim  could  be  made  from  the  U.  S.  Adjutant  General's  office. 
Accordingly,  the  headquarters  of  the  U.  S.  army  was  applied  to,  and 
an  official  reply  was  received,  stating  that  a  private,  named  Abraham 
Florentine,  had  served  in  the  American  war  in  the  early  part  of  the 
century.  Ultimately  the  widow  of  Abraham  Florentine  was  found  to 
be  alive. 

Dr.  Crowell,  a  Brooklyn  physician,  by  means  of  a  directory,  discov- 
ered her  address  in  Brooklyn,  and  saw  and  questioned  the  wiaow.  She 
stated  that  her  husband  had  fought  in  the  war  of  1812,  that  he  was  a 
rather  impetuous  man,  and  had  died  in  Brooklyn  on  August  5tn,  1874, 
and  that  his  83rd  birthday  was  on  the  previous  June  8th.  He  was 
therefore  83  years,  one  month,  27'  days  old,  when  he  died,  the  only 
discrepancy  being  17  for  27  days,  a  mistake  that  might  easily  have  arisen 
when  recording  the  message  made  through  Mr.  Moses  when  entranced 
in  the  Isle  of  Wight.  Full  details  of  this  case  were  published  in 
Volume  ii  of  the  "Proceedings  of  the  S.  P.  R." 

Thousands  of  such  instances  have  been  collected  in 
almost  every  land  of  the  Occident.  The  pages  of  written 
conclusion  history  and  of  folk-lore  are  full  of  myriads 

Drawn.  more.     How  are  we  to  explain  away  the  im- 

plication of  such  messages,  when  testified  to  by  the  most 
competent  witnesses  in  the  world?  If  these  messages  do 
not  prove  the  existence  of  a  discarnate  mind,  striving  trom 
its  side  to  pierce  the  veil  that  shrouds  the  two  worlds,  then 
I  confess  that  I  cannot  understand  them  at  all.  Nor  do 
these  unseen  beings  confine  their  attempts  to  giving  details, 
intimate  details,  of  their  lives  on  earth,  that  will  establish 
their  identity.  They  try  often  to  tell  us  of  the  spirit-world, 
of  its  desires  and  passions,  its  unfoldings  and  liberations. 
But  of  this  I  shall  not  speak  this  morning.  Suffice  it  for  us 
now  that  another  life  does  await  us,  of  which  this  is  but  the 
prelude,  and  that  we  and  our  dear  ones  shall  go  forward 
hand  in  hand  into  the  profounder  consciousness  that  lies 
beyond  the  horizon  of  death. 

Some  one  whom  we  love  is  taken  from  us.  Our  spirit 
is  stunned.  We  gaze  upon  the  lifeless  form  with  the  dumb 

sorrow  of  the  brute.     Life  seems  worthless; 
Death  without       devoid  of  all  meaning.     Of  what  use  is  all 

the  toil,  the  sweat  of  our  brow,  the  straining 
of  our  hearts  and  minds?    All  the  years  that  we  have  spent, 


39 

all  for  our  loved  ones,  all  that  they  might  not  have  to  face 
the  hard  realities  of  life!  And  'they  must  in  the  end  suc- 
cumb to  adamantine  Death!  We  cry  out  in  anguish,  and 
rebelliousness.  And  no  answer  comes  to  our  straining 
souls.  God,  grant  us  but  to  look  once  more  into  the  eye  of 
our  beloved,  to  hear  the  music  of  his  voice,  to  clasp  his 
warm  palm  in  ours!  Still  no  answer!  The  mouth  closed 
forever  will  no  more  be  wreathed  with  smiles  of  love. 
.Midnight  has  passed  over  the  darting  light  of  the  soul 
behind  his  eye. 

Ah,  my  friends,  but  is  there  no  answer?  Does  our 
beloved  sleep  forevermore?  Has  his  spirit  been  snuffed 
.  out  by  Death's  icy  breath  ?  Does  he  no  longer  If  We 
see  us  and  love  us,  and  perhaps  yearn  towards  Could  See! 
us  from  his  starry  heights?  No!  it  is  we  who  sleep,  it  is 
we  wThose  eyes  are  closed,  whose  vision  is  too  dim  to  discern 
the  butterfly  spread  its  wings  freed  from  the  prisoning 
chrysalis.  For  him  has  come  the  "dawn  behind  all  dawns," 
gently  rousing  him  to  the  mystery  and  the  profundity  ot  the 
spirit- world.  Let  me  quote  you  part  of  an  ineffably  beauti- 
ful message,  telling  of  the  first  experiences  of  a  spirit  after 
what  men  call  "death": 

"I  saw  the  earth  lying  dark  and  cold  under  the  stars  in 
the  first  beginning  of  the  wintry  sunrise.  It  was  the  land- 
scape I  knew  so  well,  and  had  looked  at  so  often.  Suddenly 
sight  was  born  to  me ;  my  eyes  became  open.  I  saw  the 
spiritual  world  dawn  upon  the  actual,  like  the  blossoming  of 
a  flower.  For  this  I  have  no  words.  Nothing  I  could  say 
would  make  any  of  you  comprehend  the  wonder  of  that 
revelation,  but  it  will  be  yours  in  time.  I  was  drawn  as  if 
by  affinity  to  the  world  which  is  now  mine.  But  I  am  not 
fettered  there.  I  am  much  drawn  to  earth,  but  by  no 
unhappy  chain.  I  am  drawn  to  those  I  love;  to  the  places 
much  endeared." 

Finally,  let  me  make  clear  two  things.  First,  I  do  not 
advocate  making  a  religion  of  "spiritualism,"  as  many  have 
done.  Survival  after  death  is  an  unanswer-  Duty  of  A11  to 
able  proof  of  one  of  the  great  tenets  of  every  Investieate- 


40 

religion,  and  should  serve  to  strengthen  all.  Second,  I  do 
not  ask  you  to  consult  mediums,  or  yourselves  to  try  to 
communicate  with  the  spirits  of  the  deceased.  I  counsel 
you  against  the  vampires  who  lie  in  wait  for  you,  especially 
at  times  of  bereavement,  when  one's  critical  faculty  is  cer- 
tainly not  at  its  best.  But  what  I  do  urge  each  and  every 
one  of  you  to  do  is  to  read  the  works  of  the  masters,  to  know 
what  is  being  done  to  conquer  death's  mystery.  Whether 
you  are  in  agreement  with  all  that  I  have  said  or  not,  you 
owe  yourself  the  duty  of  sincere  investigation.  Can  there 
be  a  question  more  vital?  Would  not  an  answer  smooth 
the  pathway  of  life  for  you,  solace  many  of  your  heart- 
aches ?  Do  not  then  scoff  and  turn  away !  Surely  the  time 
has  come  when  you  must  know.  And  remember  that  no 
man  who  has  studied  this  question,  even  though  from  .1 
spirit  of  contention,  has  been  able  to  escape  the  inevitable 
answer.  The  very  air  of  the  sphere  today  seems  alive  wita 
pregnant  voices,  in  the  words  of  Tennyson: 

''The  Ghost  in  man,  the  Ghost  that  once  was  man, 
But  cannot  wholly  free  itself  from  man, 
Are  calling  to  each  other  thro'  a  dawn 
Stranger  than  earth  has  ever  seen ;  the  veil 
Is  rending  and  the  voices  of  the  day 
Are  heard  across  the  voices  of  the  dark." 

The  future  opens  up  before  us  in  infinite  vistas  ot 
nobler  and  loftier  life.  And  the  past?  May  not  the  ans^ er 
be  in  Wordsworth's  immortal  lines  on  Immortality? 

"Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting : 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 

And  cometh  from  afar ; 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness, 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home. 

— Amen. 


Stan  anb        ffiamb? 


A  DISCOURSE  AT  TEMPLE  KENESETH  ISRAEL. 
By  RABBI  JAMES  G.  HELLER. 


Philadelphia,  March  10,  1918. 


I  have  set  myself  this  morning  the  task  of  considering 
the  relationship  of  two  'great  Jewish  movements,  Reform 
Judaism  and  Zionism.  And  it  is  with  zest  Reform  judaiSm 
and  pleasure  that  the  task  is  undertaken.  For  and  Zionism  to 
it  is  my  conviction  that  by  so  doing  we  shall 
perforce  come  to  examine  the  most  crucial  question  in  the 
Jewish  life  of  our  day  at  its  "breaking-point."  We  are  drift- 
ing this  way  and  that.  It  is  well  that  at  least  occasionally 
we  take  our  bearings.  The  crisis  and  the  conflict  are  to  be 
seen  most  clearly  by  a  comparison  of  the  tenets  and  views 
of  thorough-going  Reform  and  equally  thorough-going 
Zionism.  I  ami  sure  that  you  must  have  heard  Zionism 
tongue-lashed  by  some  of  my  esteemed  colleagues,  that  you 
have  heard  it  excommunicated  and  banned.  Are  these  two 
great  Jewish  movements,  then,  utterly  irreconcilable,  utterly 
incompatible?  Are  we  at  the  cross-roads,  compelled  to 
choose  one  or  the  other  path  henceforward?  Must  it  be 
another  case  in  which  the  Lion  and  the  Lamb  are  to  lie  down 
together, — only  with  the  Lamb  inside? 

And  there  is  a  certain  personal  poignancy  to  this  ques- 
tion. It  is  much  more  than  academic.  I  have  to  confess  to 
a  Reform  Jewish  rearing.  Try  as  I  may,  I  cannot  plead 
guilty  to  the  accusation,  levelled  recently  at  the  heads  of 
Zionists  as  a  class,  of  being  a  "Goluth"  Jew,  of  viewing 
every  Jewish  problem  from  the  spiritual  background  of  the 
Ghetto.  If  I  am  a  Reform  Jew,  if  I  believe  in  the  liberal 
tendencies  of  that  branch  of  the  faith,  am  I  doomed  to 
eternal  inconsistency?  I  confess  that  I  am  at  this  moment 
utterly  unconscious  of  any  such  psychic  disturbance  as 
would  accompany  so  violent  an  internal  turmoil. 


42 

Strangest  of  all,  the  virus  seems  spreading;  the  con- 
tagion of  this  alarming  illogicality  leaps  from  mind  to  mind, 
until  it  has  found  lodgment  in  many  men,  rabbis  and  lay- 
men, who  find  it  possible  to  be  both  Reform  Jews  and 
Zionists,  whose  number  is  legion  and  growing  daily.  This 
is  an  intensely  practical  question,  which  finds  a  forum  at 
almost  every  meeting  of  the  Union  of  American  Hebrew 
Congregations,  and  of  the  Central  Conference  of  American 
Rabbis.  What  shall  be  our  procedure  ?  Shall  we  read  these 
men  out  of  the  religion?  Shall  we  brand  them  apostates  to 
the  cause?  Shall  we  indict  them  for  logical  blindness?  Or 
shall  we  do  our  own  thinking,  and  examine  the  situation 
with  impartial  liberalism?  % 

Let  us,  rather,  consider  this  question,  as  interesting  as 
it  is  vital,  from  the  two  angles  of  history  and  logic.  \Ye 
are  told  by  Reform  Anti-Zionists  that  no  believing  Reform 
Jew  can  be  a  Zionist.  Let  us  see  how  far  this  is  borne  out 
by  facts. 

I  shall,  of  necessity,  treat  both  aspects  of  the  question 
much  more  curtly  than  they  deserve. 

The  beginnings  of  Reform  are  to  be  found  in  the 
liberal  movements  that  agitated  Gentile  Europe,  mostly 
Attitude  of  ripples  from  the  French  Revolution.  The 

Reform  Judaism.  young  and  ardent  and  ambitious  among  the 
Jews  too  were  stirred  by  the  clarion-call  to  Liberty,  Equal- 
ity, and  Fraternity.  But  they  had  a  hard  struggle,  against 
conservatism  and  dogmatism  within,  and  against  intolerance 
and  hatred  without.  But  the  new  impulse  gained  momen- 
tum as  it  rolled  down  the  slope  of  time.  The  premise  of 
Reform  Judaism,  its  most  hopeful  contention,  seemed  to 
be  that  only  if  the  Jew  would  acquire  culture,  learning, 
would  turn  from  money-lending  to  agriculture  and  art,  only 
if  he  would  strip  off  all  that  made  him  foreign  in  appear- 
ance and  in  custom,  only  if  he  would  demonstrate  his  in- 
tense patriotism,  and  become  a  German  of  the  Germans,  and 
so  on,  would  Anti-Semitism  disappear.  This  was  the  only 
remedy.  The  non-Jew  had  been  repelled  by  the  clannish- 
ness  of  the  Jew.  The  hand  of  Universalism,  of  brother- 


43 

hood,  was  stretched  out  to  clasp  his.  But  let  the  Jew  shake 
off  his  chains,  and  grasp  that  hand,  and  all  political  and 
social  disabilities  would  be  forgotten.  Rabbinical  confer- 
ences convened  to  debate  and  to  formulate  the  new  faith. 
The  young,  the  ambitious,  the  idealistic,  all  flocked  to  the 
new  banner.  A  generous  ardor  suffused  the  souls  of  those 
who  were  re-creating  their  ancient  faith,  who  were  re- 
kindling its  *'Ner  Tamid,"  its  "perpetual  lamp,"  at  the  altar 
of  modernism  and  progress.  In  1885,  at  the  Pittsburgh 
Conference,  the  rabbis  then  and  there  assembled,  proclaimed 
as  the  principles  of  Reform  Judaism :  the  Jewish  God-idea ; 
the  Bible  as  the  record  of  the  priestly  mission  of  the  Jew; 
freedom  to  modify  or  reject  laws  unsuited  to  our  own  time; 
progress  and  liberalism;  the  approach  of  the  Messianic  era, 
that  the  Jew  desires  neither  the  return  to  Palestine,  nor  the 
re-establishment  of  the  sacrificial  system :  fellowship  with 
other  religions;  immortality, — no  hell  or  paradise;  and 
finally,  social  progress  and  justice.  In  1897,  at  a  Con- 
ference held  in  Montreal,  Dr.  Isaac  M.  Wise,  the  venerated 
pioneer  of  American  Reform,  voiced  his  opposition  to  the 
new  Zionism  of  Theodor  Herzl,  and  fostered  a  resolution, 
passed  at  the  time,  rejecting  Zionism,  and  contrasting  it 
with  the  universal  and  non-political  aspirations  of  Reform. 

All  the  facts, — except  the  divergence  of  one  or  two 
men  in  early  American  Reform,  such  as  Felsenthal  of 
Chicago,  point  in  the  same  direction.  If  we  are  to  con- 
sider Reform  Judaism  as  a  religion  with  a  fixed  theology 
determined  by  these  various  pronunciamentos,  which  we  are 
not  at  liberty  to  change,  then  Reform  Judaism  and  Zionism 
are  incompatible, — utterly  so!  But  I  cannot  feel  that  this 
alone  can  decide  the  question.  The  very  nature  of  Re- 
form, with  its  oft  affirmed  liberalism,  welcomes  beneficent 
change.  Reform  is  opposed  to  dogmatism,  to  intolerance. 
Therefore,  we  have  the  right  to  enter  further  into  the  ques- 
tion. In  their  days  the  pioneers  of  Reform  tried  to  revital- 
ize religion  in  the  light  of  the  need  of  the  times, — shall  we 
not  have  the  same  privilege,  nay  duty,  in  our  own? 

Clearer  understanding  will  perhaps  come  to  us,  if  we 


44 

consider  Reform  Judaism  as  having  two  essential  aspects. 
Reform  Divided  Let  us  remember  that  Reform  is  both  a  set  of 
into  TWO  religious  convictions,  and  also  a  conception  of 

the  Jewish  "mission."  Though  partaking  of 
the  force  of  a  dogma,  the  latter  is  rather  a  means,  a  plan, 
to  carry  out  the  other  ideas,  or  ideals,  of  the  faith.  In  other 
words,  there  are,  logically,  two  distinct  elements  in  Reform, 
which,  though  historically  parallel,  can  be  separated  for 
purposes  of  our  consideration:  that  is,  Reform  as  Jewish 
liberalism,  and  Reform  as  a  typical  dispersion-cult.  The 
first  tells  us  what — for  us — Judaism  is, — the  second  how 
best  we  are  to  put  it  into  practice  as  a  social  movement.  The 
first,  that  is  the  evolutionary  idea  (religion  as  a  plastic  and 
human  instrument),  gave  rise  to  a  new  view  of  the  Bible 
as  the  work  of  man,  to  a  change  from  a  personal  to  a  na- 
tional Messiah,  to  the  abrogation  and  modification  of  many 
customs  and  practices,  and  to  a  change  in  the  social  status 
of  the  modern  Jew,  by  modifications  of  language,  dress, 
and  habit.  The  second,  which  was,  as  I  have  said,  the  ideal 
of  the  Mission,  of  the  dispersion, — led  to  the  expurgation 
from  the  ritual  of  all  mention  of  a  return  to  Zion.  All  of 
this,  both  these  efforts,  rose  from  a  desire  to  gain  social  and 
civic  rights.  The  Jews  of  those  days  were  profoundly  con- 
vinced that  all  prejudice  was  due  to  misunderstanding,  and 
that  much  of  this  could  be  traced  to  Jewish  exclusiveness  and 
peculiarity.  Remove  then  all  the  barriers,  except  those  of 
creed, — tear  down  the  ancient  walls  that  had  shut  in  the 
Jew  and  made  him  an  alien  in  the  midst  of  all  the  nations. 
Religion  and  progress  must  be  combined, — let  the  Jew  be  a 
German  among  Germans,  a  Frenchman  among  Frenchmen. 
Freedom  was  spreading  like  a  forest-fire,  leaping  from  na- 
tion to  nation.  Racial  and  national  lines  seemed  disappear- 
ing in  the  glow  of  the  conflagration.  The  Jew,  too,  argued, 
these  men,  must  do  more  than  absorb  modern  notions,  than 
rationalize  and  culturize  his  faith, — he  must  become  in 
every  sense  except  his  religion  a  patriotic  member  of  the 
nations  in  the  midst  of  which  he  lived. 

The  point  that  I  wish  to  make  as  strongly  as  possible 


45 

is  that,  as  closely  interwoven  as  all  this  is  in  the  sermoniz- 
ing and  the  indefatigable  writing  of  that  day,  The  Real 
it  can  be  divided  into  two  distinct  aspects, 
the  one  as  to  the  content  of  the  cult,  of  the  faith,  —  and  the 
other  as  to  the  best  method  of  its  preservation  and  fur- 
therance. With  the  utmost  sincerity,  having  heard  or  read 
the  views  of  both  sides  repeatedly,  it  seems  to  me  that  we 
have  here  the  real  question  at  issue.  The  reform  anti- 
Zionist  accepts  both  these  aspects.  Upon  his  side  he  has 
almost  all  the  weight  of  aurhority  ;  practically  every  dictum, 
practically  every  expression  by  the  authoritative  bodies  of 
Reform,  bears  out  his  view.  In  the  last  analysis,  the  Re- 
form Zionist,  if  he  define  his  position  clearly,  must  argue 
and  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  accept  Reform  as  liberal 
Judaism,  as  modern  and  progressive  Judaism,  without  also 
being  compelled  to  acquiesce  in  its  formula  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  Jewish  life.  Or,  to  reduce  this  complicated  abstrac- 
tion to  definite  theological  terms,  that  we  may  believe  in  an 
evolutionary  idea  of  customs,  adhere  to  the  teachings  of 
the  prophets,  —  and  still  believe  that  the  Jew  may  best  live 
his  life  as  a  Jew,  and  accomplish  his  purposes  in  the  social 
economy  of  the  human  race,  by  some  other  method  than 
that  of  the  enforced  dispersion  that  has  been  our  fate  for 
centuries. 

At  the  present  moment,  I  am  not  arguing  the  justice  of 
one  view  or  the  other,  merely  their  validity  as  interpreta- 
tions of  Reform  Judaism,  —  or,  as  I  said  at 


the  outset,  the  logical  compatibility  of  Reform      True 

Liberalism. 

Judaism  and  Zionism.  If  Reform  Judaism  ' 
were  a  closely  welded  church,  with  a  strict  and  exact  state- 
ment of  its  doctrines,  it  would  be  much  simpler  to  say  what 
can  and  what  cannot  be  done  in  its  name.  Among  other 
sects  the  problem  would  be  much  simpler,  —  Reform  Zion- 
ists would  simply  be  excommunicated  as  heretics.  But  Re- 
form Judaism  has  again  and  again  refused  to  sanction  any 
such  application  of  authority,  opposed  as  this  would  be  to 
the  very  principles  for  which  it  stands.  Many  of  our  rab- 
bis reject  angrily  the  term  "Reformed  Judaism"  as  a  libel. 


46 

They  claim  that  theirs  is  no  sect  with  hard  and  fast  dogmas, 
that  it  is  continually  changing,  and  must  by  its  own  protesta- 
tions be  ever  changing,  ever  liberal.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
of  the  sincerity  of  their  wrath  upon  such  occasions, — but 
their  practice  does  not  always  bear  out  their  conviction.  For 
what  can  .one  say  of  the  attempt  to  read  Zionists  and  Zion- 
ism out  of  the  authoritative  organizations  of  Reform  Juda- 
ism in  America?  One  can  understand  opposition,  sincere 
opposition  to  the  program  of  the  Zionists;  one  can  respect 
heartily  those  who  hold  to  the  early  Reform  Mission-Ideal 
whole-souledly.  But  it  is  difficult  for  one  to  be  patient  with 
these  attempts  at  excommunication,  with  the  fanaticism 
that  characterizes  so  many  of  our  self-styled  "liberals." 
Our  grandfathers,  in  their  day,  were  striving  to  revitalize 
Judaism,  to  lend  it  strength  and  youth  by  the  changes  they 
wrought.  Has  the  day  passed,  when  this  privilege  may  be 
used?  Have  we  not  the  same  right  as  had  they,  to  alter,  if 
need  be,  some  of  their  convictions  and  conclusions,  now 
that  the  times  and  the  needs  of  the  Jew  are  so  radically 
different  from  what  they  were  when  the  Ghetto-walls  crum- 
bled in  western  Europe?  We  may  differ  among  ourselves 
as  to  the  advisability,  or  as  to  the  necessity,  or  as  10  me 
nature  of  the  changes  that  should  be  wrought;  but  surely 
as  Reform  Jewrs  we  have  not  the  right  to  deny  a  place  in 
our  ranks  to  men  who  believe  with  us,  who  stand  shoulder 
to  shoulder  with,  us  in  their  liberal  Judaism, — because  they 
have  a  different  conception  of  how  both  their  and  our.  con- 
victions may  be  effectualized.  I  plead  for  a  finer  spirit  of 
sympathy,  of  brotherhood,  of  unity,  and  of  liberalism  than 
has  yet  been  shown.  I  plead  for  adherence  not  to  the  letter 
of  all  that  was  written  in  those  excited  days  of  the  first 
flush  of  freedom, — they  themselves,  those  pioneers, — those 
hardy,  brave  pioneers  of  the  Jewish  spirit,  would  not  have 
wished  it.  They  would  be  the  last  to  demand  a  servile 
acceptance  of  all  the  principles  they  formulated  under  the 
stress  of  their  own  times.  True  loyalty  to  them  means  to 
carry  on  their  spirit,  to  apply  it  to  the  spiritual  needs  of  our 


47 

day,  to  judge  our  problems  as  did  they  by  the  criteria  of 
duty  to  our  faith,  our  race,  and  thereby  to  all  mankind. 

Let  us,  then,  not  trouble  ourselves  overmuch  concerning 
this  question  of  mere  formal  compatibility.  Much  more  im- 
portant for  us  as  men  and  as  Jews  is  the  second  division,  the 
second  great  problem  that  a  comparison  of  Reform  Judaism 
and  Zionism  brings  to  us  for  serious  thought  this  evening: 
what  is  the  spiritual  relation  of  Reform  Judaism  and  Zion- 
ism, —  what  is  our  status  to-day,  what  is  the  prospect  of  our 
immediate  future,  —  how  best  are  we  to  meet  the  situation? 
I  shall  examine  this  question  from  two  sides,  first,  from  the 
negative  angle,  how  far  things  look  dark,  in  how  far  Zion- 
ism is  a  remedy  for  the  ills  of  the  present  ;  and  second, 
whether  Zionism  sets  before  the  Jew  an  ideal  and  a  project 
that  will  supply  the  lacking  force.  These  are  only  two  phases 
of  the  same  question,  two  sides  of  the  shield.  An  ideal  is  a 
rainbow  cast  upon  the  celestial  vistas  of  the  future  by  the  sun 
of  our  purpose  shining  through  the  storm-clouds  of  the 
present. 

The  strange  thing  about  our  situation  is  that,  with  all 
the  accusations  and  counter-accusations  of  "optimism"  and 
"pessimism,"  both  sides  diagnose  our  situation     Forces  Mak 
with     remarkable     unanimity     of     verdict. 


r^,  ,  u  r  j.    •  •          Integration. 

1  hough  we  may  boast  of  our  attainments  in 
this  land,  though  we  may  point  with  justifiable  pride  to  the 
rapid  strides  made  by  the  Jew,  though  we  may  glow  at  the 
names  of  men  like  Judah  P.  Benjamin,  Louis  D.  Brandeis, 
we  all  feel  at  one  time  or  another,  when  we  commune  with 
our  own  souls  in  the  silences  of  the  night,  that  all  is  not  as 
it  should  be,  that  with  the  prosperity  that  we  have  found, 
there  has  not  been  —  to  say  the  least  —  a  corresponding 
effectiveness  in  Judaism,  in  the  accomplishment  of  the 
sacred  "mission"  we  have  set  ourselves.  Nay,  to  all  of  us 
come  moments  when  our  observation  and  experience  seem 
to  press  us  toward  the  conclusion  that  not  only  have  we 
failed  to  live  up  to  our  enlarged  opportunities,  but  that  we 
are  steadily  and  rapidly  losing  ground.  Those  who  have 
studied  our  situation  in  a  thorough-going  manner  seem  con- 


vinced  that  it  is  no  less  than  ominous  and  fraught  with 
danger.  Ruppin,  in  his  famous  study  of  the  Jewish  life  of 
our  times,  tries  to  show  that  the  forces  which  preserved  the 
Jew  in  the  past  are  no  longer  operative.  According  to  the 
facts,  gathered  with  .great  care  by  this  eminent  statistician, 
Jewish  persistence  was  due  to  three  great  causes  (omitting 
the  greatest  of  all,  that  of  religious  loyalty) :  first,  economic 
divergences  in  occupation,  which  to  a  great  extent  prevented 
contact  with  the  peoples  among  whom  the  Jews  lived ;  sec- 
ond, their  continual  exile  from  countries  where  culture  wa- 
growing  to  lands  still  at  a  low  state  of  development;  and 
third,  the  prevalence  of  large  families  and  a  high  birthrate. 
In  civilized  lands,  where  the  Jew  has  attained  comparative 
equality,  we  find,  according  to  Ruppin,  three  corresponding 
causes  that  are  bringing  about  the  rapid  assimilation  that 
can  be  demonstrated  statistically  in  those  European  lands 
where  the  figures  are  available:  first,  the  economic  progrc-- 
of  the  Jews;  second,  the  declining  birthrate;  and  third,  gen- 
uine dispersion.  Israel  Cohen,  also,  cites  figures  to  show  the 
large  amount  of  voluntary  apostasy  and  of  intermarriage  in 
our  day,  a  tendency  that  began  0/1/3'  with  emancipation. 
Rahel  Levin  wrote  to  her  brother,  thirty  years  after  the 
death  of  Moses  Mendelssohn,  that  half  the  Berlin  com- 
munity had  been  baptized.  Exaggeration  though  this  un- 
doubtedly is,  it  indicates  wrhat  the  state  of  affairs  must  have 
been. 

In  this  country,  unfortunately,  we  cannot  obtain  statis- 
tics of  apostasy  and  of  intermarriage.  Personal  observa- 
tion seems  to  show  that  we  have  not  suffered  such  inroads 
here,  though  the  proportion  is  growing  daily.  This  is  only 
because  we  are  not  yet  as  far  along  the  road  of  assimila- 
tion as  are  our  brethren  abroad.  But  let  us  review  as 
briefly  as  possible  our  own  status  here  in  America. 

Pittsburgh  Jewry  was  told  not  so  long  ago,  as  has 
almost  every  Jewish  community,  that  the  only  bond  be- 
ReiigiousTie  tween  Jews  is  their  religion.  I  shall  not 
Loosening.  shirk  this  issue.  A  simple  calculation  will 

give  us  some  idea  of  where  we  stand  religiously.  The  Jew- 


49 

ish  population  of  Philadelphia  is  calculated  as  200,000. 
There  are  nineteen  regularly  organized  synagogues  in  the 
city,  that  hold  services  the  year  round.  Let  us  make  the 
most  liberal  estimate  possible,  and  say  that  these  nineteen 
synagogues  are  filled  to  capacity  every  Sabbath.  They 
would  hold  no  more  than  20,000  men  and  women,  or  in 
other  words,  not  one-tenth  of. the  Jewish  community.  I 
need  not  assure  you  that  Philadelphia,  though  it  boasts 
many  loyal  and  effective  workers,  does  not  fill  every  seat  in 
its  houses  of  worship.  What  conclusion  are  we  to  draw?  If 
religion  is  to  be  the  only  bond  between  Jews,  and  only  so 
small  a  minority,  such  a  fragment  of  the  whole,  can  or  will 
maintain  its  connection  with  Judaism, — then,  indeed,  the 
outlook  must  be  very  dark  for  those  who  hold  such  a  view. 

My  friends,  I  feel  myself  to  be  in  the  position  of  the 
Norse  God,  Thor,  the  Thunderer,  who  visited  the  home  of 
the  giants  in  disguise,  and  was  invited  to  engage  in  a  trial 
of  strength.  One  of  the  tests  was  that  he  should  drain  a 
horn,  or  beaker  of  water  at  one  gulp.  With  all  his  might 
he  strove,  but  the  water  went  down  not  an  inch.  As,  de- 
jected and  vanquished,  he  was  about  to  leave  the  home  of 
the  giants,  he  was  told  that  the  other  end  of  the  flagon  had 
been  in  the  sea.  He  had  tried  to  quaff  the  ocean  at  one 
swallow.  I  am  longing  to  tell  you  in  detail  of  the  real  con- 
dition of  the  American  Jew,  to  bring  before  your  mind's  eye 
a  true  picture  of  where  we  stand.  Facts  and  instances  come 
thronging, — and  I  must  confine  myself  to  the  briefest  out- 
line. 

First  came  the  Portuguese  Jews  to  this  land  of  freedom. 
They  gave  a  noble  example  of  patriotism, — and  where  are 
most  of  them  now?     Except  for  a  few  scat-     American 
tered  families  and  groups  they  have  vanished.     Jewish 

Development. 

How  are  we  to  account  for  this,  if  we  take 
stock  in  the  argument  so  often  advanced  that  the  Jew  can- 
not disappear,  and  that  we  need  have  no  fear,  because  we 
have  persisted  and  have  survived  for  so  long?  How  shajl 
we  reconcile  this  fatuous  optimism  with  the  disappearance 
of  such  large  communities  of  Jews  as  those  of  Egypt,  China, 


50 

Greece,  and  Sicily  in  the  Middle  Ages?  But,  let  us  pass 
on!  Next  came  the  waves  of  German  Jewish  immigration, 
bringing  with  them  the  germs  of  Reform.  It  was  the  sec- 
ond, American-born  generation  that  really  established  Re- 
form as  a  religion  in  America,  as  it  was  this  generation  that 
insisted  upon  the  use  of  English  and  the  curtailment  of 
Hebrew.  But  with  success  came  a  new  step, — the  young  be- 
gan to  drift  away  from  Judaism  almost  entirely.  Foreign 
movements  made  small  inroads, — Christian  Science,  Ethical 
Culture,  New  Thought, — none  of  them  serious,  or  large, 
but  useful  as  straws  to  show  which  way  the  mind  was  blow- 
ing. The  largest  losses  have  been  in  the  towns,  where  con-- 
tact is  more  frequent  between  Jew  and  non-Jew.  In  the 
cities  the  process  has  been  delayed  by  the  inertia  of  the  large 
mass.  However,  in  the  cities,  too,  we  have  been  losing,  at 
the  top  and  at  the  bottom,  in  the  highest  and  in  the  lowest 
classes.  It  is  the  middle-class,  the  bourgeoisie  of  American 
Jewry  that  supports  the  synagogue  to-day,  excluding  the 
obvious  exceptions.  Social  ambition,  wealth,  the  spirit  of 
the  age,  and  innumerable  competing  abstractions,  are  alien- 
ating the  so-called  upper  classes.  Social  barriers  erected 
across  the  entrance  to  the  synagogue,  natural  radicalism, 
pre-occupation  with  the  business  of  living,  frequent  contact 
with  Christians,  have  had  their  effect  upon  the  Jewish 
working-class. 

And  where  lies  the  strength  of  Judaism?  According 
to  those  who  espouse  the  Reform  Mission-ideal,  the  Jew  is 
From  Angle  of  to  translate  the  principles  of  the  Bible  into 
practice,  to  be  the  servant  of  the  preachments 
of  the  prophets.  Only  a  small  minority  attend  any  religious 
school,  and  one  can  hardly  see  that  the  influence  exerted 
upon  these  few  is  very  vital  or  permanent.  Even  our  Re- 
form optimists  deplore  the  un-Jewishness  that  seems  to 
pervade  even  the  pulpit  when  it  expounds  Judaism  to  the 
faithful  remnant.  Does  the  typical  American  Jewish  child 
receive  instruction  in  the  home,  instruction  that  might  ob- 
viate and  replace  all  the  rest?  Shorn  of  almost  all  the 
picturesque  ceremonial  that  even  Reform  wishes  to  retain. 


careless  of  the  abstract  truths  to  be  gleaned  from  Bible- 
reading,  our  young  men  and  women  go  forth  into  the 
world  with  no  more  than  a  vague  feeling  of  loyalty  to  a 
social  group,  consciousness  of  group-prejudices,  and  of  the 
name  "Jew." 

Many  Reform  anti-Zionists  admit  this  deplorable  state 
of  affairs,  but  assert  that  it  is  only  temporary,  that  inspired 
by  our  glorious  opportunities  we  shall  recover      Only  Courage 
and  go   forward  to  a  more  glowing  future,      and  Action 

.          .  .    .  Will  Avail. 

But  where  are  the  signs,  no  matter  how  faint, 
of  this  revival?  As  a  mere  statement,  we  cannot  be  con- 
vinced by  it.  \Ve  ask  for  the  causes  that  \vill  bring  about 
this  longed-for  rejuvenescence.  And  wre  hear  no  answer 
save  that  we  have  always  won  in  the  past, — therefore  we 
shall  recover  again.  Past  experience,  no  matter  how  oft 
repeated,  is  not  an  unfallible  indication  of  what  the  future  • 
will  bring  forth.  And,  as  Ruppin  showed,  we  are  facing 
utterly  novel  forces  in  Jewish  life  to-day.  We  dare  no 
longer  trust  to  the  good  fortune  that  has  brought  us  down 
the  ages.  To  deserve  Our  heritage  we  must  ourselves  en- 
sure our  continued  and  revivified  existence.  In  our  day, 
too,  we  must  fight,  not  against  persecution,  not  clasping 
the  martyr's  stake, — but  against  the  ghost-like  foe  of  in- 
difference, of  slow  encroaching  alienation.  Did  Jochanan 
Ben  Zacchai  simply  remain  quiescent  and  trust  to  good 
luck,  when  he  saw  the  Jewish  nation  sinking  to  destruction 
before  the  Roman  eagle?  No,  he  laid  the  foundation  for  a. 
Judaism  that  would  survive  the  long  mediaeval  night,  by  a 
sturdy  and  hopeful  system  of  Jewish  schools.  And  he 
schemed,  had  himself  taken  out  of  the  besieged  city  in  a 
coffin,  played  upon  the  vanity  of  Vespasian  by  predicting 
that  he  would  soon  be  called  to  Rome  as  "Impcrator," — and 
gained  permission  to  found  that  little  school  at  Jabne,  that 
little  rock  upon  which  Jewish  survival  was  founded.  We, 
too,  must  be  men, — must  face  our  problems,  must  find  the 
means  to  re-fire  our  young  men,  to  make  them  again  see 
visions  and  dream  dreams. 

Here  in  this  land  of  liberty  the  Reform  mission-idea 


52 

has  had  its  trial.  Have  we  converted  our  neighbors  to  our 
The  "Mission"  strict  monotheism  ?  Have  we,  indeed,  given 
idea  Has  rjse  to  the  Unitarian  movement,  or  caused 

the  American  Constitution  to  be?  Only  ig- 
norance could  dictate  such  instances.  Unitarianism  rose 
first  in  other  lands,  as  early  as  Martin  Luther,  and  had  its 
first  hold  in  Poland  and  Hungary,  in  England,  Scotland 
and  Ireland.  The  similarity  between  the  Constitution  and 
the  Bible  comes  only  because  the  Fathers  of  the  Constitu- 
tion were  good  Christians  and  knew  their  Bible,  not  because 
they  called  in  a  board  of  Jews  as  an  advisory-committee,  or 
because  the  small  band  of  Jews  here  at  the  time  had  set 
their  mark  upon  the  soul  of  the  new  country.  The  Jew  has 
done  more  than' his  duty  as  an  American.  We  stand  second 
to  none  in  our  love  for  this  noble  land  of  ours.  With  the 
fervor  of  unspeakable  gratitude  we  are  ready  to  offer  all 
upon  its  altars.  But,  according  to  the  typical  Reform  Jew- 
ish view,  all  this  is  no  religious  distinction,  since  we  are 
Americans  by  nationality  and  Jews  by  religion.  Nor  can 
this  in  any  way  detract  from  the  facts  that  are  staring  us 
in  the  face,  from' the  stark  realities  of  our  present  position 
as  Jews.  Our  condition  is  serious.  With  all  our  achieve- 
ments, with  all  the  freedom  that  has  opened  the  gates  of 
opportunity,  duty  demands  that  we  realize  the  seriousness 
of  our  situation. 

After  all  this  I  am  conscious  that  it  smacks  of  paradox 
to  ask  you  not  to  consider  Zionism  a  form  of  Jewish  pessi- 
zionism  is  mism,  as  it  is  so  often  represented,  not  to  con- 

optimistic.  sider  it  as  no  more  than  a  revolt  against  Anti- 

semitism,  as  a  clutching  at  a  straw,  a  feeling  that  we  are 
about  to  sink  in  the  engulfing  waters.  Zionism  is  essen- 
tially an  optimistic  movement.  Is  it  not  possible  to  fail 
under  certain  circumstances,  and  to  succeed  in  others?  Con- 
tinued existence  is  the  first  thought  of  the  anti-Zionist, — a 
finer  and  fuller  life  that  of  the  Zionist.  Zionism  is  actuated 
by  its  love  of  the  Jew,  and  its  confidence  in  his  ability, — 
more  than  by  fear  of  failure.  But,  at  the  very  least  it  has 


53 

a  definite  remedy  to  propose,  virile  action  to  redeem 
us  from  our  long  lethargy.  It  is  a  forward-looking  move- 
ment. That  is  genuine  optimism !  'By  making  Judaism 
all  of  life,  by  entwining  it  with  the  living  fibres  of  mind 
and  heart  and  soul,  we  will  be  able  once  more  to  make  it 
live.  If  the  Hebrew  language  can  be  revived  after  well- 
nigh  two  millennia  of  disuse,  cannot  the  Jew,  in  whose  soul 
Jewishness  "doth  but  slumber,"  be  aroused  to  his  oppor- 
tunities? Zionism  recognizes  the  true  character  of  the 
Jew.  Take  the  finest  organism  in  the  world,  with  the  most 
delicately  articulated  body,  shut  it  under  a  glass  prison,  and 
remove  the  air,  remove  the  conditions  of  life,  and  it  cannot 
live,  cannot  continue  its  surging  progress.  Zionism  re- 
stores the  condition  of  success,  the  air  which  the  Jew 
needs  to  breathe.  It  is  a  teaching  of  modern  science  that  in 
this  life  there  can  be  no  function  without  an  organ,  no 
thought  without  a  brain,  no  sight  without  an  eye,  no  audi- 
tion without  an  ear.  And  yet  we  have  been  trying  to  make 
the  Jew  live  without  a  Jewish  body,  a  soul  without  an  or- 
ganism, striving  vainly  to  speak  to  the  ears  of  the  living, 
breathing,  pulsating  nations  and  peoples  of  to-day. 

If  you  would  win  the  young  Jew,  give  him  an  ideal  and 
a  project  that  will  call  for  all  his  soul  and  body,  that  is 
active,  not  passive.  The  shallow  universalism  of  the  early 
mission-idea  fails  because  it  cannot  stand  the  rough  breath 
of  reality.  Wherever  the  Jewish  "will-to-live"  burns  or 
smoulders,  there  is  at  least  a  potential  prophet.  Heap 
tinder  and  fuel  upon  the  flame,  and  the  world  will  be  illumi- 
nated by  its  darting  rays. 

"If  I  am  not  for  myself,  who  will  be  for  mef  But,  if 
1  am  only  for  myself,  then  who  am  If"  Give  us  the  right 
to  fight  our  own  battles,  to  identify  Judaism  with  our  heart's 
blood,  and  as  Jews  we  will  give  the  world  an  unparalleled 
spectacle  of  selfless  heroism,  of  devotion  to  the  cause  of  all 
mankind.  If  you  would  meet  the  spiritual  needs  of  the 
present,  if  you  would  with  all  your  hearts  restore  the  an- 
cient faith,  if  you  burn  to  vindicate  the  Jew, — then  aid  the 
Zionist ! 


54 

What  can  we  do,  scattered  over  the  world  as  we  are, 
without  a  "rest  for  the  sole  of  our  foot,"  without  a  piece 

The  work  of          °^  so^  we  can  ca^  our  own>  without  institu- 
tions  or  men  that  we  can  claim  as  manifesta- 


Our  Example.  .  .  . 

tions  ot  the  genius  of  our  people  ?  Where  are 
the  advantages  of  this  vaunted  dispersion?  The  spiritual 
situation  of  occidental  Jewry  can  best  be  compared  to  the 
history  and  the  growth  of  this  beloved  country  of  ours.  In 
many  lands  were  the  men  and  women,  stout-hearted  sons 
and  daughters  of  liberty,  in  whose  souls  stirred  the  gospel 
of  freedom.  They  longed  for  it,  —  they  strove  to  embody 
it  in  the  laws  and  customs  of  their  own  lands.  Why,  then, 
should  not  these  men  and  women  have  remained  scattera' 
all  over  the  globe,  —  why  should  they  not  have  preached  and 
exemplified  their  gospel  among  the  nations?  But  no,  their 
love  of  freedom  drove  them  across  the  unchartered  seas, 
and  built  up  a  new  nation.  What  a  nation  of  paupers  and 
"black-sheep"  this  country  would  have  been  without  them, 
without  their  precious  blood  !  Would  you  have  had  them 
remain  "stay-at-homes"?  Do  you  not  feel  the  answer  in 
your  love  of  this  loved  land?  Every  people  has  felt  the 
beneficent  effects  of  the  American  experiment.  The  torches 
of  the  French  Revolution  were  kindled  at  American  fires. 
A  beacon  and  a  haven  has  America  been  to  all  men,  —  an 
ensign  of  hope  in  the  heavens.  Here  the  principles  of  free- 
dom have  been  worked  out,  —  hither  free  men  have  come, 
have  left  their  birthplaces,  have  gathered  into  and  created 
a  new  nation,  that  all  mankind  might  be  the  benefactor. 

How  better  can  we  repay  our  debt  to  America  than  by 
being  worthy  children  of  her  spirit,  by  carrying  un  the 
work  of  humanity!  Zionism  is  another  venture  in  free- 
dom, in  kindling  the  torch  of  progress  and  enlightenment. 
The  trumpets  are  already  sounding,  —  the  nations  of  the 
world  are  calling  us  to  our  true  mission.  Shall  we  not, 
small  and  great,  Reform  and  Orthodox,  take  our  place  in 
the  ranks  of  our  people  ? 


IMIV.  OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 


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A     000070517    8 


